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NOTE: THIS IS A NEW VERSION OF MY REVIEW POSTED ON OCT 22, 2009, I HAD TO MAKE SOME CHANGES AND REMOVE THE MP3 AND THE VIDEO (Chasing The Pirates) BECAUSE WE RECEIVED A NOTICE FROM A THRID PARTY THAT THE CONTENT INFRINGES THEIR COPYRIGHTS. WE WANT TO MAKE SURE THAT CTNMUSIC DOESN’T HOST ANY ILLEGAL CONTENT AND RESPECT THE ARTISTS. THANKS FOR YOUR COMPREHENSION!
When listening to “Chasing Pirates” this morning, I was just wondering if is it the New Norah Jones ? “woah !!! This crazy and catchy single just kicks ass“, I said to myself ! The melody sticks on my mind and don’t want to leave my room for the rest of the day.
This first single from the eight-grammy award pianist/songwriter chases away all my doubts about the lady for knowing how reinventing herself after her double-platinum album Not Too Late, taking a new direction with this fourth album, experimenting with different new sounds and an opportunity to work with a new set of collaborators: produced by Jacquire King (Kings Of Leon, Tom Waits, Modest Mouse), THE FALL features new band members & songwriting collaborations with Ryan Adams, Okkervil River’s Will Sheff, & Jesse Harris.
“I knew I wanted to try some different things on this album, I just had a sound in my head, I wanted the grooves to be more present and heavy and I also just wanted to do something different. ” Jones says. “I’d been playing with the same musicians for a long time. We’re all still friendly and I hope we play together again, but it felt like a good time to work with new people and experiment with different sounds. As far as a producer, I wanted someone who could take me out of my comfort zone and find the right musicians to capture what I wanted to do with this collection of songs. I got in touch with Jacquire initially because he engineered one of my favorite records of all time, Tom Waits’ Mule Variations. He was really eager to do it and we got along really well, which was important.”
Jacquire King helped Jones put together a new group of musicians to perform on the album, including drummers Joey Waronker (Beck, R.E.M.) and James Gadson (Bill Withers), keyboardist James Poyser (Erykah Badu, Al Green), and guitarists Marc Ribot (Tom Waits, Elvis Costello) and Smokey Hormel (Johnny Cash, Joe Strummer). Jones and King tailored the songs to the musicians’ strengths. “I think the record sounds different due to the variety of musicians we used,” Jones says, “I knew I wanted to play with grooves more than I have on previous albums. Some of these new songs lent themselves to having driving rhythms underneath.”
The direction for THE FALL didn’t take long to unfold—it started to present itself on one of the first songs she wrote for the project. “About a year ago, I did some demos in my home studio,” she says. “I had some friends come in and we figured out a cool arrangement for this song ‘Chasing Pirates,’ with a cool drum part. It went somewhere I didn’t expect it to go, and that became a direction to look in.“
Another noticeable change on Jones’ upcoming album is that she plays mostly guitar. “I actually write more on guitar than I do on piano,” she says. “It just felt more natural for me to play it on these songs.”
“For this album, I wanted to keep my country side away, so I needed to figure out how to make this song work and tie it in with the others. We did it by taking the guitar out, and there was this crazy organ sample and it sounded like a razor blade underneath everything. It was this cool moment where I realized that you can just strip away some of the elements and you can get something totally new.“
Even songs that drew on the jazzier side of Norah Jones, like “It’s Gonna Be,” demanded new treatments. “That one has a swingy sound, a lot of words,” she says, “it could have been really hokey. But the drummer, my friend Robert DiPietro, came up with a part that was part Gene Krupa, part Adam Ant, and that just made the song something completely different. The rhythm really dictated the sound on that song.“
From the swaying rock thump of “Stuck” to an intimate ballad like “Back to Manhattan,” one thing that hasn’t gone away on The Fall is the distinctiveness and expressiveness of Jones’s singing. That part of the recording process came easier to her than ever before. “I was way more relaxed about my vocals,” she says. “I’ve never been really obsessive about that, but on this record I was more focused on everything else that was happening, so I could just kind of relax and sing.“
Norah Jones certainly always seemed mature beyond her years, but THE FALL has the feeling of an artist growing into a new phase in her creative development. Beyond the changes in her singing, her instrumental work, and even her conception of her own sound, she maintains that her songwriting is at the very foundation of her new approach.
“I’m older now, and it’s evident in my writing,” she says. “I always used to be worried about the craft of the songwriting, because I was so new as a songwriter, but now I’m not afraid to just try something. I’m confident enough that I just want to get it out and hear it.“
So time’s to check out this irresistible and undeniably hit-bound “Chasing Pirates”:
THE FALL is set to be released on November 17, on Blue Note Records.
About the author : Alias is a French self-made-man, multi-talented artist, he is also a music-producer, screen writer and artistic director for films. Read more from this author
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saab
says:
Tu en as de la chance de l’avoir écouté, nous pauvres petites gens devront encore attendre
Je suis dingue du permier extrait Chasing Pirates et contrairement à ce que beaucoup de monde a pu dire ce n’est pas pop/rock mais bien pop/soul, j’ai hâte pour la suite et vient même de commander The Fall en version Deluxe avec le second cd qui contient 6 morceaux live !
Alias
says:
(54)Charles
says:
Norah Jones has the kind of talent that will give her (if she wants) a thirty or forty year career in the music industry. Long after most of the current artists have been forgotten, Norah Jones will still be making music.
diba
says:
Jones adopts a smoky voice and soulful veneer for the opening track and first single, “Chasing Pirates,” while displaying a slinky kind of ambience on “Light As a Feather (co-written with Ryan Adams). look at Nice collection of Norah Jones http://ligamusic.com/Artist/1236/Norah_Jones/download-mp3/