Norah Jones - Come Away With Me (Remastered 2022) (2002/2022) [Official Digital Download 24/96]

What does a shrug sound like? On "Don't Know Why,” the opening track of her debut effort, Norah Jones suggests a few possibilities. The first time she sings the title phrase, she gives it a touch of indifference, the classic tossed-off movie-star shrug. Her tone shifts slightly when she hits the chorus, to convey twinges of sadness; here the casual phrasing could be an attempt to shake off a sharp memory. Later, she shrugs in a way that conveys resignation, possibly regret—she's replaying a scene, trying to understand what happened.

Those shrugs and shadings, tools deployed by every jazz vocalist of the 1950s, are inescapable throughout Come Away With Me—in part because everything surrounding Jones' voice is so chill. There's room for her to emote, and room for gently cresting piano and organ chords. Unlike so many of her contemporaries, Jones knows instinctively how much (or how little!) singer the song needs. The secret of this record, which came out when Jones was 22, is its almost defiant approachability: It is calm, and open, and gentle, music for a lazy afternoon in a porch swing. As transfixing covers of Hank Williams' "Cold Cold Heart” and Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You” make clear, Jones thinks about contours and shadows when she sings; her storytelling depends as much on the scene and the atmosphere as the narrative.

And Jones applies the same understatement to the original songs here, which weave together elements of country, pop, jazz and torch balladry in inventive ways. It's one thing to render an old tune with modern cleverness, a skill Jones had honed as a solo pianist/singer before she was discovered. It's quite another to transform an original tune, like Jesse Harris' "Don't Know Why,” into something that sounds ageless and eternal, like a standard. Jones does that, over and over, using just shrugs and implications, rarely raising her voice much above a whisper.

TRACKLIST

01. Norah Jones - Don't Know Why
02. Norah Jones - Seven Years
03. Norah Jones - Cold Cold Heart
04. Norah Jones - Feelin' The Same Way
05. Norah Jones - Come Away With Me
06. Norah Jones - Shoot The Moon
07. Norah Jones - Turn Me On
08. Norah Jones - Lonestar
09. Norah Jones - I've Got To See You Again
10. Norah Jones - Painter Song
11. Norah Jones - One Flight Down
12. Norah Jones - Nightingale
13. Norah Jones - The Long Day Is Over
14. Norah Jones - The Nearness Of You



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