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When Norah Jones appeared on the scene with her debut Come Away With Me in 2002, she rocked the music world with her gentle jazz tenderness and set a whole new market in place. Her armful of Grammies was as big a surprise to her as anyone. Without doubt, it was a major album of the decade. The problem is that with such success comes exposure that dilutes your sound with the curse of the law of diminishing returns. Norah’s third album suffers from such a law. It is a beautiful album with meticulous playing and those vocals that are as pretty as her face but it hasn’t the same impact. Writing or co-writing all the songs and producing it at home with Lee Alexander was an attempt to bring some new shade to the familiar color and some of the instrumentation is more sparse and daring in a quiet way but the overall feel never shakes it up enough. Even the political angst of "My Dear Country" where in her best crooner way she bashes the President doesn’t jar you enough to make it more than background music. It is stunningly good background music but to catch your attention listen to what she is doing in her extracurricular work with The Little Willies and The Peter Malick Group. 

Steve Stockman

Steve Stockman is the Presbyterian Chaplain at Queens University, Belfast, Ireland, where he lives in community with 88 students. He has written two books Walk On; The Spiritual Journey of U2 which he is currently updating and The Rock Cries Out; Discovering Eternal Truth in Unlikely Music. He dabbles in poetry and songwriting and he has a weekly radio show on BBC Radio Ulster (listen anytime of day or night @ www.bbc.co.uk/ni/religion/rhythmandsoul). He has his own web page--Rhythms of Redemption at http://stocki.ni.org . He also tries to spend some time with his wife Janice and daughters Caitlin and Jasmine.