Lady luck Norah Jones delivers Come Away with Me, part two BY JON GARELICK

I first heard Norah Jones live at Scullers in Cambridge in January of 2002, just about a month before the release of her debut, Come Away with Me (Blue Note). There was a lot of excitement — the savvy pros representing Jones (including old-hand producer Arif Mardin) had been stirring up big buzz, and I was told by smart people I trust that I was going to be blown away. Since that show and the debut, there’ve been the usual jazz-crowd complaints that Jones isn’t jazz. But what struck me that night two Januarys ago wasn’t the problem of what genre she fit into (even if she was playing a jazz club and recording for a revered jazz label) but — in view of the buzz — how small-scale her music was. Her beautifully controlled vocals never rose above pianissimo; her tempos never accelerated beyond a medium shuffle.

That was 18 million CDs (worldwide) and seven Grammys ago. In the post–September 11 world (hey, the Beatles came to America the February after JFK’s assassination, and Norah released Come Away with Me the February after al-Qaeda), everyone, it seemed, wanted to slip into the warm bath of Jones’s music. And her very unclassifiability was part of the appeal. Jones had learned her craft playing jazz piano and singing jazz standards, and she played with jazz musicians. But her own music had a country lilt underlined by her tendency to sing songs by Johnny Cash and Hank Williams. Where to place her? The early press for Come Away with Me groped for comparisons, even suggesting the oddball jazz-influenced Nashville songwriter Charlie Rich. But that wasn’t quite right either. Whatever his idiosyncrasies, Rich was Nashville, and Jones was a mix of New York (where she was born and eventually came to play music) and Texas (where she grew up).

This all came home to me again recently when I was undergoing a two-hour dental visit (complicated "restorative" work, but that’s another story), lying back in the chair, getting drilled, listening to "soft rock" — Bonnie, Sheryl, and, of course, the inexplicably indelible Marc Cohn one-hit "Walking in Memphis." Norah Jones has more to do with any of these guys than she does with Shirley Horn or even Cassandra Wilson (the one obvious genre-crossing jazz antecedent). But Sheryl’s got too much rock-and-roll oomph in even her easiest easy listening, Bonnie’s a hot blues mama even at her most adult contemporary, and Cohn could get a job with the reconstituted Doobie Brothers. No, whatever Jones’s faults or strengths, there’s no one quite like her.

The new Feels like Home (Blue Note), which hit stores this past Tuesday, shouldn’t disappoint her fans. Jones has made statements in interviews about the album’s being a slight departure — a bit more up-tempo, a bit more country, a more mature vocal style. But it’s not all that different. Despite some special guests, she has stuck with her core band of bassist Lee Alexander, guitarists Adam Levy and Kevin Breit, drummer Andrew Borger, and back-up vocalist Daru Oda. There are some new wrinkles in the instrumental textures — most notably in Jones’s use of Wurlitzer electric piano, which gives a retro-R&B feel to a few numbers. Overall, however, these are still subdued ensembles (the Band’s Levon Helm and Garth Hudson contribute to the groove on "What Am I to You?", but not so you’d notice if you didn’t know). Percussion credits include African slit drum but also "box," and "foot tapping." The dominant instrumental textures are still provided by a mix of acoustic and electric guitars and Jones’s piano.

Songwriter/guitarist Jesse Harris, who wrote five of the 13 tracks on Come Away with Me, including the hit single "Don’t Know Why," is absent, but it hardly matters. Jones is writing more here, and so is the rest of the band. She prides herself on the fact that this is a band project, and that as much as anything contributes to the "Norah Jones sound." There are songwriting contributions from Tom Waits, Townes Van Zandt, and Duke Ellington, but nothing to divert the flow of that sound.

And it’s a very pretty sound indeed — another reason it’s hard to dismiss Jones out of hand. If she and her cohort tend toward bland lyrics of comforting romantic masochism, there’s always musical detail to catch your ear: that subtle use of percussion, even the percussive squeak of rubbed guitar strings and the brief organ-like chorus of flutes on "The Long Way Home"; the Southwestern tinge of Garth Hudson’s accordion on Van Zandt’s "Be Here To Love Me"; the mix of resonator guitar and pump organ that gives a church-hymnal feel to "Humble Me." The coda solo piano/voice performance of the Ellington, with its opening jazz chords, is as close as she comes to sounding American Songbook–like on the new album. If any song on Feels like Home comes close to menace, it’s Levy’s "In the Morning," with the R&B fills and sexy solo from that Wurlitzer, and percussion that begins with a spare kick-drum thump and moves from tocking off-beats to a hard snare. It’s also got Jones coming as close as she ever does to expressing overt lust: "Funny how my favorite shirt smells more like you than me."

Yes, you can hear a bit more maturity in Jones’s singing. She pushes her voice farther than on the last CD, whether she’s sniffing that shirt or adding extra melismatic bends to her lyrics for "Don’t Miss You at All" (laid over the Ellington instrumental "Melancholia"): "And then I wonder who I am/Without the warm touch of your hand." But her range doesn’t exactly run from pianissimo to forte — it’s more like 100 gradations of pianissimo. That’s apparent on the bluegrassy "Creepin’ In" (by Alexander), a duet with Dolly Parton. The song is built on a charming conceit: a lover who keeps "creepin’ in" to the singer’s life like water through the sole of a leaky shoe; and it’s got a dandy acoustic-guitar solo from Breit. At first, Parton’s verse provides striking contrast to Jones’s "straight" reading — until Parton’s hell-bent delivery makes you realize everything you’re missing.

As for the lyrics, they rarely get beyond that wistful romantic melancholy, as in Jones’s "What Am I to You?", in which she asks her lover for reassurance. In a January 25 New York Times Magazine piece, writer Robert Hoerburger commented on Jones’s habitual diffidence in personal interactions, whether the subject is guacamole or the difference between Ryan Adams and Bryan Adams, a "motif" that he identified as "It’s O.K. if you are/aren’t/do/don’t." The songs Jones writes, and the ones she chooses, tend to be diffident in the same way, bland and avoiding emotional, or even imagistic, extremes, no matter how mildly depressed. "Sunrise" is something she wants to avoid ("Couldn’t tempt us if we tried"). In "Toes," she avoids commitment — either to a person or to a way of life: "Walked a mile just to find the edge/Some place low enough to step right in . . . But my toes just touch the water." When she gets to Van Zandt’s fevered view of romantic disorientation, it’s another contrast that might bring you up short: "The window’s accusing the door of abusing the wall." Waits, in a song written with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, also takes a funny turn on an old conceit: "Money’s just something you throw off the back of a train." But they all get sucked up into the smooth musical blend, the way Hank Williams’s "Cold, Cold Heart" did on Come Away with Me.

Jones’s diffidence is matched by her modesty. "It’s because I’ve been lucky, not because I’m such an amazing musician," she said about her success to Anthony DeCurtis in a cover story for the spring issue of Tracks. And that’s another thing that distinguishes her from the pack. Whatever you say about her music, she’s come by it honestly, working the small-club scene in New York with a community of like-minded musicians (her inclusion of their material on what will undoubtedly be another multi-million-seller is an act of generosity and gratitude — a way to share her success). There are no song doctors here, and no obvious calculations. Like Come Away with Me, Feels like Home is organic, homegrown. Which is another way in which it avoids being bad. And hey, jazz fans, give Blue Note a break: there’s a lot worse stuff the label could be crossing over with. If Norah Jones is helping to bankroll Jason Moran and Stefon Harris, that’s not a bad thing either.

Jones is still only 24 (she turns 25 on March 30). And she obviously has taste — in her arrangements, in her own playing, in her choice of covers. No, she’s not bad (replay your tape of Martina McBride at the Grammys if you want to see how bad bad can be). It’s just always disappointing when music this successful, and with this much potential, isn’t better, more nourishing. In the Times piece, she praises both Ryan Adams and Lucinda Williams, the latter for her "raw, wet" sound. But what makes those singer-songwriters compelling is their willingness to create a mess. You can’t get wet if you put just your toe in the water.