She’s thrown out the bathwater but Norah Jones is still holding firmly to the baby as she tries some experimentation, writes Eamon Carr

It's seven years since I first met Norah Jones. Back then she was struggling to cope with the expectations of bullish executives who boasted she was going to be a major star. Norah, a musician who enjoyed playing in other people’s bar bands, had a lot to concern her. She worried how the world would react to the news that this attractive Texas-raised girl was, in fact, the daughter of virtuoso sitar player Ravi Shankar, and whether the revelation would deflect attention away from her music. And she worried how that acoustic pop soul pot-pourri would be received on Blue Note, a label long associated with groundbreaking moments in jazz.

Since then Jones has sold a combined 36 million units of her three albums worldwide. Her laid-back debut, Come Away With Me, made the running with the hit single Don’t Know Why. Everything since then has been a variation on that unfussed theme.

Everything, that is, until now.

It seems it took a break-up to shake Ms Jones out of her comfort blanket. So for this new 13-track collection out goes her partner, bass-player and producer of her last album, Not Too Late, (that’s longtime boyfriend Lee Alexander) and in comes Jacquire King, the bloke who created the sonic mayhem on Tom Waits’ blues apocalypse, Mule Variations.

Also out is Norah’s old backing band. In its place we get a whole bunch of players of note, including guitarists Marc Ribot and Smokey Hormel (who’ve played with Waits), keyboard player James Poyser (Roots and Erykah Badu) and seasoned drummer Joey Waronker.

The changes were prompted, she says by the demo versions she made of the new songs.

“I liked them, but they didn’t sound much different from my last record, sonically,” she says. “I really wanted to experiment and I knew I’d have to use different people if I wanted to do all that stuff.”

It would be unwise to expect sweeping changes. Norah Jones is too studied, too careful in her approach. So although the bathwater goes out, the baby stays behind. Subtle though they are, the changes are welcome.

They add a much-needed edge to the proceedings. An edge that Jones’s freewheeling delight in playing in the Greenwich Village bands of her friends always suggested she was capable of. Hearing 30-year-old Norah sing, “If I touched myself the way you touched me, then I wouldn’t need you...”, is like eavesdropping on a moment of private reflection. The backing track trembles with barely disguised lust, shards of guitar noise delicately overlaying a furtive piano figure.

Teaming up once again with Jesse Harris, who wrote her hit Don’t Know Why, she co-writes a couple of songs including Even Though, which chronicles falling into temptation. “Don’t understand the words he said. Made me do wrong... I know trouble will follow but I have to go...”, Jones sings dreamily. While Will Sheff, of Okkervil River, is credited on Stuck, one of the album’s lower points, Light As A Feather, a co-write with Ryan Adams, fares marginally better.

When she trusts her instincts, Jones comes out best. Back To Manhattan conveys the confusion of leaving a lover in Brooklyn for a more stable relationship downtown. December is a hauntingly bruised love song on which Norah on piano is joined by Harris on acoustic guitar. The album closer is a hoot. Man Of The Hour has a supper club ambience as Jones tinkles an old clunky piano and relates, “It’s him or me,” that’s what he said. But I can’t choose between a vegan and a pot head...” Instead, wise woman, she settles for a dog (“Ruff ”).

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