Artist:  Norah Jones

Title:  The Fall

Label:  Blue Note Records

Even as her heart crashes, her music takes flight ...

With her fourth album, The Fall, jazz pop anti-diva Norah Jones shows why the old mantra "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," often inhibits artistic growth. Thankfully, she does this by discarding the comfortable routines that proved so commerically successful with her previous recordings. After her 2002 debut, Come Away with Me, sold as fast as stores could stock it and cleaned up at the GRAMMYs, few could blame her for playing it musically safe with each forthcoming album—especially when those first three combined to sell more than 36 million copies.

Then Jones and her boyfriend/songwriting partner, Lee Alexander, ended their nearly 10-year romantic relationship. The artistic catalyst, inspiration and perhaps even security blanket she'd had long before her fame was now gone. In fact, The Fall is not only Jones' first album without him, it's the only album she's made without their community of musicians backing her in the studio. Jones turned to producer Jacquire King (Kings of Leon, Tom Waits) to introduce her to new players and take her into new territory.

Thanks to The Fall, critics will have to be more thoughtful before placing Jones in their typical "easy listening" and "coffee-table music" categories. For starters, the 30-year-old artist shoves her definitive piano stylings off to the side for most of these 13 songs. Instead Jones spends most of her time wielding electric and acoustic guitars and playing the Wurlitzer almost as much as the piano. And sleepy jazz? She can finally say sayonara to "Snorah," her once-entrenched nickname, as Jones incorporates a variety of musical elements from country, rock and even alternative. While The Fall isn't a complete departure from her signature sound, the album is both her moodiest and liveliest. And fans will be pleased to know Jones' velvet voice is as engaging as ever.

Jones' shattered romance more than haunts the album thematically. In "Chasing Pirates," both the album's opening track and its rhythmic lead single, Jones sings, "Your words in my head/Got me mixed up ... I try not to dream up impossible schemes/That swim around, wanna drown me insane." The album's angry track, "Tell Yer Mama," obviously could have been subtitled "So Dam_ Wrong" since Jones repeats the phrase more than any other in the song.

In the otherwise innocent "I Wouldn't Need You," she overshares when she reveals, "If I touched myself/The way you touched me ... Then I wouldn't need you to love me." And when Jones explains in the playful "Man of the Hour" that she "can't choose between a vegan/and a pot head," listeners will be relieved to know the "pot head" who wins out is actually her pet dog. While Jones is to be commended for being honest about where she "is" on The Fall, it's worth noting she sounds far from being ready to move on.

**This review first published on November 24, 2009.