Send "Norah Jones " Ringtones to your Cell 
| Popmatters |
 The transformation is complete. Norah Jones, the golden girl of Blue Note records and queen of the adult pop-jazz crossover field, after selling millions of records and being hailed as the torchbearer bringing vocal jazz back into the mainstream, has re-emerged as a singer-songwriter with an album full of guitar-driven pop-soul. Nowhere on The Fall will you hear anything like “Don’t Know Why”, “Come Away with Me”, or “What Am I to You”? Gone is the warm blanket of delicate drums and piano, replaced with snares that actually hit and lightly-buzzing electronic keyboards.“Chasing Pirates” prods along with Al Green’s thump and keyboards straight out of the Billy Preston school. The whirring noises of “Even Though”, hazy tremolo on “Young Blood”, and the meandering “Light as a Feather” create an effect that many of the faithful listeners of the early days will find unsettling. “Waiting” will likely leave listeners eagerly leaning forward in their chairs toward the speakers—or pressing their headphones a bit tighter—hoping that something will happen. And then it’s over. However, tracks like “I Wouldn’t Need You”, “You’ve Ruined Me”, and “Back to Manhattan” gingerly step back into the wistful territory of Come Away with Me and Feels Like Home, yet somehow still feel removed from the albums that elevated her to the top of her field. The trademark instrumentation and arrangements of the 2002 and 2004 discs are absent—it still has that late-night feel, but in a much different vein. Is that a distorted guitar on “Stuck”? And what are those strange, hypnotic washes of keyboard doing there? Does this… rock? Almost—the band can’t quite shake off their restraints and completely cut loose. But then there’s a return to the mellow approach with “December”, which might have been a fan favorite, had it been Jones alone on piano, rather than on guitar; but the hopeful lyric makes it endearing and stands among her best tracks. ...full text |
| Guardian |
| What can Norah Jones mean by that title? Is The Fall a reference to the season of mellow fruitfulness or does it imply something darker, a fall from grace? One might suspect the former. After all, since she arrived seven years ago in a welter of Grammy awards for her debut, Come Away With Me, Norah has played little Miss Mellow, clocking up an astonishing 35m sales with her languid, jazzy croon. She's ventured out of her comfort zone rarely, principally on side projects, showing up in fishnets and blond wig with her punk band, El Madmo, for example. Buy it from Buy the CD Download as MP3 Norah Jones The Fall Blue Note EMI Music 2009 It doesn't take long to realise that The Fall is unveiling a rather different Ms Jones to the tasteful, piano-led balladeer of her first three albums. There are, for sure, a couple of familiar, wistful love calls, like the opening two cuts, "Chasing Pirates" and "Even Though", but the dominant sound is guitar-heavy, with an echoing atmosphere reminiscent of Tom Waits's Mule Variations. The similarity is no accident, the producer here being Waits veteran Jacquire King, who has set Jones's engaging, husky vocals in an ambience of clanging guitars, loping rhythms and electronic tics, courtesy of an array of New York sessioneers (and the singer herself). Norah's regular band is gone, as is her long-time beau and bass player, Lee Alexander; the couple split 18 months ago. It's perhaps little surprise that her songs boast a new-found toughness, their scenarios plucked from the chaotic emotional life of a single New Yorker. "Back to Manhattan" finds Norah torn between lovers on opposite sides of the river, while "Stuck", co-written with Texan rocker Will Sheff, describes a drunken, unhappy night on the town. She's either bereft – in "the loneliest place I have known" on the austerely beautiful "December" – or vengeful, vowing to "tape your picture over his" on the churning "Young Blood", and delivering a righteous, southern "you done me wrong" on "Tell Yer Mama"....full text |
| Bbc |
| Norah Jones always seemed almost unfairly equipped to survive the inexorable attrition that mows down legions of her fellow female singer-songwriters: young (23 at the release of her 2002 debut, Come Away With Me), beautiful, possessed of a lovely husky drawl and an appealingly picturesque back-story (Ravi Shankar is by now resigned to being recalled principally as Jones’ father, rather than as the world’s best-known sitarist). Jones didn’t merely survive, of course – her three albums to date have shifted 36 million copies. In today’s climate, that seems as miraculous and unfathomable as a seeing someone walking a brachiosaurus. In this context, it would be easy to be cynical about this fourth album. To the limited extent that it has hitherto been possible to object to Jones, it has been on the grounds that she errs towards the inoffensive – or, more bluntly, that her sensationally profitable records are duller than the side-salads at the dinner parties for which they serve as soundtracks. The Fall seems a carefully plotted attempt to confront this reputation for cosiness. Ryan Adams and Okkervill River’ s Will Sheff are recruited as collaborators, and Marc Ribot – best known for his fraught guitar-playing with Tom Waits – is enlisted in the backing band....full text |
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