For better or worse, Norah Jones created her niche with her explosively popular debut in 2002, and, to some, this niche is not a good one. Her music has been held up next to Starbucks: posh, clean, hip, and unabashedly safe. This certainly doesn’t encapsulate Jones’s musical ambitions, and, over her past few albums and external musical collaborations, she has worked hard to prove it so.
Even after the success of her debut, she displayed this restlessness: her second album was more country than lounge jazz, and everything after that showed her as someone anxious to explore different musical avenues, but unwilling to truly alienate her adult contemporary audience. This time around, she’s partnered with Brian Burton (a.k.a. DJ Danger Mouse...you know the guy.) A renowned mix-master, Burton not only produces the record in his own imaginative way, but he co-wrote each of the songs with Jones.
We’ll recall how her previous LP, 2009’s The Fall, was touted as a radical departure for Jones, shedding the adult contemporary jazz that won her Grammys in favor of something edgier. As we learned with that album, Jones doesn’t convert her music into different genres as much as she allows them to influence her. (And that’s really for the better, isn’t it, because what rock fan would admit to rocking out to her music, and what Jones fan would want her to produce a genuine rock record?)
Once again, fans need not worry: like per past excursions, her new record is as sweetly listenable as the previous four, slyly blending its ambitious production with her comfortable songwriting in a less obvious way than if it was in sloppier hands. This is no club record, and despite the playfully sultry, kitschy cover (inspired by the one-sheet for the 1965 film Mudhoney) Little Broken Hearts is a steady, weighty record. That’s not to say “contemplative”: it’s a statement that wallows in emotion rather than merely considering them.
And the emotion is, you guessed it, heartbreak. Apparently Ms. Jones endured a difficult breakup since we last heard from her, and the best way for an artist to deal with the difficult is to spew it out in her art. And she does, and what we get is Jones’s most sincere musical statement to date. She moans and croons her way through the dreamy world of her heartache…sort of like she’s riding alone through an abandoned tunnel of love with Burton as the top-hatted ferryman.
As with 2007’s underrated Not Too Late, Little Broken Hearts opens with a gorgeously dark ballad. This time it’s “Good Morning,” which pits a lazy 4/4 acoustic strum against softly frantic piano triplets. As she coos out the verses and moves into a fragile falsetto for the chorus, singing “I’m folding my hand,” it’s clear that, vocally, this is a new kind of Norah Jones record.
As sweet and serviceable as her voice is, it had never been particularly emotional before this record. Here, she adopts the gently cracked voice often used by female folk-rock singers (think Cat Power or KT Tunstall.) That helps things along: emotion is certainly called for on this record, even if it does put Jones close to sounding like everyone else. It works in conveying the sense of loss and despair that often happens with something as potentially world-shattering as a breakup.
Burton’s treatment of her award-winning pipes is in contrast to the rendering by past producers Arif Mardin and Lee Alexander (the latter being a past songwriting collaborator and lover as well. I wonder if it stung that he didn’t get his own breakup record. Anyway....) They were always sure to put her voice far above everything else…and that didn’t always work. Songs like 2004’s “Creepin’ In” and 2007’s “Sinkin’ Soon” lacked the weight and the guts they wanted to have, stifling creative ambition in order to retain the inoffensive AC sheen.
Throughout this record, we get production-muffled drumming, dreamy background vocals, gently scorching country guitars, and prog-rock-like orchestral flourishes that recall St. Vincent (look her up). Most remarkable are the jaunty little hooks that contrast with the dense moodiness in an superbly ironic way. For instance, the lead-off single “Happy Pills” uses an easy groove and a sassy, almost unbearably catchy backing vocal hook as a backdrop for her heartbroken falsetto moan of “Please just let me go....”
This juxtaposition makes for an effective portrait of a mind in the throws of a breakup: constantly speculating, blaming, second-guessing, mind-changing, affirming, doubting, justifying, biting, and always sad. In “She’s 22” (ouch), we hear her beg, “Does she make you happy? I’d like to see you happy.” It sounds like Jones could take some breakup lessons from Alanis Morissette, but listen further to "Happy Pills," where she sings, "How does it feel to be you right now dear? You broke this apart, so pick up your piece and go away from here." On "Miriam," Jones sings, "Miriam, that's such a pretty name, and I'll keep saying it when I make you cry" and "I know he said it's not your fault but I don't believe that's true/I've punished him from ear to ear and now I've saved the best for you." Such pulpish violence pitted against such beautiful music (a dreamy, stately march) evokes something out of a David Lynch film.
Like most albums based on ambiance, it’s easy to lose track of each song by the end, even as brisk a record as this is. One feels there will be a strong number of people—probably mostly women— who will find themselves in a situation where this broken tunnel of love is just the record that they’ll want to lose themselves in, with Norah as their ferryperson. She has created a bed of sorrow for us to lie in when we need it.
What we also get with Little Broken Hearts is the musical truth about Norah Jones that open-eared listeners learned over her past few records: she’s not stuck in the coffee shop. She’s growing up, constantly, like all artists do, and sometimes growing pains make for the best art.
