Orange County Register

• Norah Jones, The Fall (Blue Note) –- It’s easy to make too much of the small but significant advances of this, the modestly daring fourth album from the Queen of Quiet. Her first new work in nearly three years, it’s also the first she’s recorded since turning 30 in March –- and, most importantly, it’s the first cut without the musicians (including bassist and ex-boyfriend Lee Alexander) who helped define the soft, sultry sound that became her multiplatinum signature.

Now we’re getting a (supposedly) whole new Norah, with new players to accompany a new ’do, staring with Jacquire King — who in the recent past burnished discs for the likes of Tom Waits, Kings of Leon and Modest Mouse, and who here places his saturated stamp all over the production.

Amid the songwriting credits: Will Sheff of poetically moody indie-rock outfit Okkervil River co-wrote the simmering and slow-churning rocker “Stuck,” one of the album’s sharpest moments. “Don’t Know Why” guy Jesse Harris, whose songs were so crucial to establishing Jones’ aesthetic on Come Away with Me, returns to play guitar on the delicate lone-star swoon of “December” and co-author two others, the lonely desire of “Even Though” and the gentle jaunt of “Tell Yer Mama,” both of which bear his melodic hallmarks.

And momentarily retired Ryan Adams co-penned the smoldering “Light as a Feather,” which moves like Aimee Mann sunk into plush Pink Floyd, though in a blind taste test I’d have sworn he also had something to do with the dead-of-night, aha-shake-heartbreak of “Back to Manhattan.”

Instead, that’s one of eight –- out of 13 –- tracks that Norah wrote alone, twice as many as she managed on 2007’s Not Too Late, which itself was her first album to feature all of her own (or at least co-owned) compositions. That one took baby steps, and this one bunny hops; that one merely tapped her mold lightly with a chisel, this one cuts a deep crack down one side.

It may be the point where some get off her sea cruise, at least for a while -– I can’t imagine she’ll never return to a strictly piano-based jazz-pop approach, but right now she’s deliberately doing anything but that. True, all but a few songs here feature her tickling the ivories in some fashion, but only the closing cuteness of “Man of the Hour” (who, to tip you off, doesn’t have “any baggage tied to your four feet”) sounds like the Norah of before — in this case Bessie Smith sass tempered by doleful humor à la Randy Newman.

It’s a nice finish, and a sop to fans who’d prefer she act more like Diana Krall. But it’s strictly a coda, and an almost out-of-character one for this set. In all other regards, this is the maturation of her artistry –- the album that, after a number of persona-perverting cameos for other people’s records (Peeping Tom fans know what I mean), finally brings an alternate aspect of the songbird out in her music.

Or does it? For all the shifts in tone and atmosphere -– largely courtesy of a hodgepodge of exceptional session cats, including six-string ace Smokey Hormel, keyboardist James Poyser, drummer Joey Waronker and terminally offbeat guitarist Marc Ribot –- I find The Fall, undoubtedly a pivotal disc for the beloved performer, to nonetheless be more of the same sweet Norah, just dressed up for a different ball.

Even “It’s Gonna Be,” already cited as one of the more envelope-pushing (for her) cuts here because of its galloping Gary Glitter groove, still rolls along beneath a typically pretty-seductive vocal. You can take the girl out of the sultry, but you can’t take the sultry out of … well, look, just listen to the finely detailed plaint “You’ve Ruined Me,” enhanced by otherworldly organ and soulful guitar and yearning harmonies … all the buff and polish surrounding it hardly hides the inescapable core of Norah’s sound.

She’s as impossible to dramatically alter as, oh, James Taylor. But what makes this rewarding, repeatedly enjoyable listen a milestone in her evolution is what it signifies, both for Norah purists who wish she’d never change and ardent supporters who’d welcome a raw rock detour: her style is already so monolithic, it can withstand measured radicalization. Sometimes it might even improve because of it. Grade: B+

Photo by Autumn DeWilde.

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