Brooklyn-born jazz pop pianist Norah Jones returns today with the release of her fourth studio album The Fall.
It is her first since 2007’s Not Too Late and features songwriting collaborations with alt country luminaries such as Ryan Adams and Will Sheff and was produced by Jacquire King.
Buy 'The Fall' from Amazon UK by clicking this image
The sultry vocalist and pianist was born in New York in 1979 to a unique musical heritage as the daughter of Ravi Shankar, but grew up in Texas with her mother.
A fan of Billie Holiday and Bill Evans, she got into jazz whilst at Dallas’ Booker T. Washington High School for the Performing and Visual Arts where she won the Down Beat Student Music Awards for Best Jazz Vocalist and Best Original Composition in 1996.
The next year she earned a second Best Jazz Vocalist and worked towards a degree in jazz piano at the University of North Texas for two years. She then moved to New York in the summer of 1999 and began writing her own material whilst appearing with trip-hop band Wax Poetic and songwriters Jesse Harris (guitar), Lee Alexander (bass) and Dan Rieser (drums).
In 2000 they recorded demos for Blue Note Records and Jones was signed to the famous jazz label in early 2001. Jones spent a lot of the year playing with Hunter’s group and writing her own debut record Come Away with Me.
Produced by Arif Mardin, it came out in early 2002 and garnered a lot of coverage and debate over how much of a jazz album it was – the label described it as “jazz-informed”.
Featuring jazz musicians like guitarist Bill Frisell and drummer Brian Blade it combined jazz ideas with a pop sensibility but debates about the music were quickly overshadowed by the huge success of the album which went multi-platinum and sold 18 million copies worldwide and went on to win Jones eight Grammys.
Her follow up album Feels Like Home was released in 2004 and was more influenced by country music. Despite the change in direction it sold over a million copies in its first week of release and Jones was even named one of the most 100 influential people in the world by Time magazine.
Her third album Not Too Late came out in early 2007 and was notable for its more stripped down approach and was recorded at Jones’s home studio. Executives at Blue Note Records reportedly did not know she was recorded the album but it still reached the #1 position in twenty countries and eventually sold 5 million copies worldwide.
The Fall sees Jones take a new direction, experimenting with different sounds and a new set of collaborators, including producer Jacquire King, Ryan Adams and Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, as well as her frequent partner Jesse Harris.
Her new group of musicians includes drummers Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.) and James Gadson (Bill Withers), keyboardist James Poyser (Erykah Badu, Al Green), and guitarists Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello) and Smokey Hormel (Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer).
The songs are all originals, sometimes composed with her collaborators, and often feature a different musical approach with clanging guitars, loping rhythms and electronic sounds, under the direction of producer King, who has previously worked with Kings of Leon, Modest Mouse and Tom Waits.
The first single is called ‘Chasing Pirates’:
The album is out now and can bought via Amazon UK here.
