There’s a Norah Jones album that I return over and over again. At least once a year. No, it’s not her debut album Come Away With Me, though that album should be remembered as one of the big important works of the 00s. And it’s not Feels Like Home which spawned “Sunrise”, her most ubiquitous song. It’s the Fall, her “guitar” album.
The Fall was well-received when it came out (I gave it a five-star review) On Metacritic it has a solid 73 rating, which ranks it fourth on her overall album list. But no one has talked about this record since 2009. Seriously if you Google it, it takes a few pages before anything after 2013 comes up. And yet, this is the Norah Jones album that sticks with me the most.
Maybe it’s the autumnal nature of it. It’s literally called “the Fall” so it’s become a habit for me to listen to every September. There is a throughline of transitions in the songs. Jones’s life is in transition at the same time the seasons change. The guitar as the primary instrument is a signpost.
But it’s not just that this album sounds and feels like a brisk fall. This is an incredibly consistent set of songs, not one is bad. Jones is a strong songwriter, whether she writing to the piano or to the guitar. The jazzy adult contemporary piano pop of her first two albums translates to very light and breezy acoustic pop.
The move to the guitar could have turned out as blandly inoffensive. But she wisely ups the tempo – the rhythm of nearly every song feels like it is being constantly pushed forward. And when she does slow the tempo, her lyrics are playful and explicit enough to keep the songs from getting sleepy (there are references to a lover’s touch and werewolves in the lyrics). And while her lyrics may be more plaintive, she doesn’t simplify her vocals – they’re as smoky and layered as always. Which gives the style more depth. Nothing in this record’s sound is a revelation, but the sound is still unique. Unique to Norah and unique to this one work in particular.
The Fall is not the iconic record that Come Away With Me is. It was not an influential album (early St. Vincent being the only thing on the same sonic highway). But it’s a great album that the world has seemingly forgotten about because Jones decided to ditch the piano. But it’s the Norah Jones album that’s going to be with me the rest of my life. Because on the first day of autumn next year, the first record I’m going to play is the Fall.