Norah Jones – Pick Me Up Off The Floor

For a long time in the US and UK, Norah Jones and milquetoast contemporaries like Jamie Cullum became bywords for skilled but unchallenging music, the light jazz accompaniment to the dinner party from your nightmares. Whether one found disagreement with Jones’ most agreeable and plain music didn’t matter, though, for she was undoubtedly one of the defining artists of the first decade of the century. Much of the decrying appeared to stem from a place of jealousy, however, for Jones’ talent was impossible to deny: her smoky voice breathed life into every line; her prodigious piano-playing imbued her songs with a timeless quality. It’s these two pillars that gather over her new record, surely pleasing any ardent Jones follower, and showing that her musicianship is able to last for nearly two decades.