newcritics

I belong to that white, suburban, middle class, middle-aged cohort that finds Norah Jones irresistible. We’re the kind of folks who still buy CDs instead of trading ripped files, so it’s unsurprising that Jones’ third CD, Not Too Late, debuted this week at the top of the Billboard charts.

There are a few reasons why Jones appeal to my peers. Although she’s 20 years our junior, her tastes are our tastes (Willie Nelson, Neil Young, Hoagy Carmichael, Billie Holiday, The Band). Her retro commitment to the sound of musicians playing in space recalls the music of our youth. The “sly, come-hither stare” with which she deploys her enormous brown eyes and good-looks on album photos helps, of course. But most of all what appeals is her latte-soaked voice–close-miked and breathy with stable, steady pitch that sounds effortless to maintain (no pitch correction for Ms. Jones).

But being a Norah Jones fan has become an exercise in diminishing marginal returns.

Jones and her producer/bass player/co-writer/boyfriend Lee Alexander are hailing this album as her most personal because it features a baker’s dozen of songs written or co-written by the singer. But that’s just the problem, because while Jones’ vocal skills are extraordinary, her songwriting chops are not.

Looking back over her brief career it seems obvious. Yes, there was decent original material on her breakthrough debut (Jones’ Come Away With Me, Jesse Harris’ Don’t Know Why, Alexander’s Feelin’ the Same Way). We forgave those songs their failings (feeling empty as a drum?) because the writers were young, and because Jones sounded so spectacular on the songs written by great writers (Hank Williams’ Cold, Cold Heart, Hoagy Carmichael’s The Nearness of You, JD Loudermilk’s Turn Me On).

But over the past two albums Jones has moved towards more and more original material either written by her or for her by close associates. It’s easy to understand the move both financially–adding songwriting royalties to the income stream–and artistically–everyone wants to express themselves. But the result has been two forgettable records with songs that never surprise and rarely engage.

Norah Jones’ career has been a triumph of timbre over substance, of mood over meaning.

Timbre is that quality of sound that allows us to distinguish a trumpet from a saxophone, or our mother-in-law’s voice from our sister’s. It’s the stuff that inspires us to describe Jones’ voice as breathy, Lee Alexander’s production as warm. And according to Daniel Levitin, who runs the Laboratory for Musical Perception, Cognition, and Expertise at McGill University, it is timbre that plays the most important role in our ability to recognize and respond to music. (In his endlessly rewarding new book, This is Your Brain on Music, Levitan explores the latest groundbreaking research on brain functioning and music.)

Mood is a persistent mental state that can be effected by auditory stimuli. Some sounds are intrinsically soothing, Levitan writes, while others are frightening… Abrupt, short, loud sounds tend to be interpreted by many animals as an alert sound… Slow onset, long, and quiet sound tend to be interpreted as calming….

The timbre of Jones’ voice is positively intoxicating. Although she’s never displayed the athletic range or audacious inventiveness of Ella Fitzgerald, Jones has a voice that is equally recordogenic, with the same silky quality heard on Ella’s classic 1950s Verve recordings. (Does Alexander record her with vintage mikes? Neumans? RCA ribbons?)

Not Too Late possesses the best sound of any Norah Jones album to date–natural, open, spacious, everything that has gone out of favor in today’s flattened, over-compressed world of pop.

And like her previous albums, Not Too Late establishes a consistently soothing mood, with rhythms shorn of abrupt dynamic swings. The result is a sound that almost narcotizes, soothing and triggering dopamine bliss. But, like heroin users on the nod, listeners find that when the records end there’s nothing memorable that lingers: no choruses still humming in the ear, no catch phrases stuck on the tongue.

I’ve just finished listening again to Not Too Late, and though it felt great each time I can only remember a single song, Sinkin’ Soon (a 1920s retro minor key tune on what sounds like St. James Infirmary changes). Why? Because it features the unusual timbre of a Buber Miley-styled plunger-mute trumpet solo.

And any attempt to rationally parse the material robs it entirely of what charms it possesses. My Dear Country has the albums’ most interesting melody, with minor key verses and a major key bridge. But the song is undone by childish, would-be political lyrics:

The newsmen know what they know but they
know even less than what they say
And I don’t know who I can trust
For the come what may

Embarrassingly bad on the page, intoxicating when Jones sings it, utterly forgettable in the end, as are the swoon/moon/june caliber of hackneyed rhymes that fill out the rest of the record.

Maybe the sound of the music is enough–soft, rich, luxurious. Certainly it makes for perfect aural wallpaper, which is the principal way people consume music and explains Jones’ status as the poster child for the Starbuck’s sound.

But it’s all icing and little cake, particularly frustrating because Jones’ voice is so good, her piano instincts so profoundly musical. Much more rewarding was a tossed off collection of country covers Jones, Alexander and friends recorded last year as The Little Willies. On that album Jones was just part of the band, a pianist and part time lead singer. It’s her loosest performance on record with excellent, assertive piano playing. Jones singing the Bob Wills’ novelty “Roly Poly” is better than anything on Not Too Late.

Like the lab monkey who keeps injecting himself, I’ll play Not Too Late a couple of dozen times I’m sure, and get pleasure from it’s sound. Then I’ll put it on the shelf next to Feels Like Home (even the titles are banal and forgettable) and keep hoping that next time Jones will record a collection of songs as good as her voice.