With Feels Like Home, the follow-up to her eight times Grammy winning debut, Come Away With Me, easy listening's 24 year-old poster girl Norah Jones has a staggering weight of expectation to live up to.
However, anyone expecting to be wowed from the start stands to be disappointed. At face value it's Come Away with Me MkII, albeit a more countrified version without the instantly dreamy and delightful melodies of "Don't Know Why" and "Come Away with Me". Over the long haul though, it's a quietly brilliant leap forward that not only lives up to expectation, but far exceeds it.
With "Sunrise", "Those Sweet Words" and "Carnival Town" Jones ushers in more gentle sauntering and jazz-sweet reflection, but this time the understated dirt-track atmospheres don't just conjure pretty twilight moods; they convey a beauty and a powerful emotional cache that lingers. Likewise, "The Prettiest Thing" murmurs with tender sadness while the low-slung swagger of "In the Morning" broods with so much lip-curling passion it's almost seedy. However, the proof of just how far Jones has come lies in "Don't Miss You At All". A humbling end-of-the-affair lullaby built around the two-in-the-morning piano of Duke Ellington's instrumental "Melancholia", it's as moving as it is brave. --Dan Gennoe