Norah Jones - Not Too Late [Deluxe Edition]

Not Too Late [Deluxe Edition]

By Goenitz  Oct 30, 2007

Pros: The best of her albums

Cons: Just listen now!!!

Just listen it and you'll be perfect. Although a large part of her appeal has always been that she sounds familiar, like a forgotten favorite from the early '70s, Jones is too young and too much a New York bohemian to settle into a role as a nostalgia peddler, so it made sense that she started to stretch a little after her 2004 sophomore set Feels Like Home proved that her surprise blockbuster 2002 debut Come Away With Me was no fluke. First, there was the cabaret country of her Little Willies side band, then there was her appearance on gonzo artrocker Mike Patton's Peeping Tom project, and finally there's this hushed record, her first containing nothing but original compositions. It's also her first album recorded without legendary producer Arif Mardin, who helmed her first two albums (he passed away in the summer of 2006), giving them a warm, burnished feel that was nearly as pivotal to Jones' success has her sweet, languid voice. Mardin died in the summer of 2006 and in his absence, Jones recorded Not Too Late at the home studio she shares with her collaborator, bassist and boyfriend Lee Alexander. Although it shares many of the same sonic characteristics as Jones' first two albums, Not Too Late boasts many subtle differences that add up to a distinctly different aesthetic. Jones and Alexander have stripped Norah's music to its core. Gone are any covers of pop standards, gone are the studio pros, gone is the enveloping lushness that made Come Away With Me so easy to embrace, something that Not Too Late is most decidedly not. While this might not have the rough edges of a 4track demo, Not Too Late is most certainly music that was made at home with little or no consideration of an audience much larger than Jones and Alexander. It's spare, sometimes skeletal, often sleepy and lackadaisical, wandering from tunes plucked out on acoustic guitars and pianos to those with richer full band arrangements.