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.
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
"To a Good Run"
Saturday night, March 10: for the first time since my tenure with the Vancouver Voice ended upon its folding, I ventured out to see a play at one of our local playhouses. I went alone to the Slocum House Theater in downtown Vancouver to catch their production of “Greater Tuna.” It would be the final production of the company at Slocum House, as, after more than 40 years, increased rent would force them to find a different venue.
It was a wet, indigo twilight as I parked along Block 10, the empty lot block just northeast of Esther Short Park. I had written a piece about it for my reporting class at Washington State University in Vancouver back in the fall of 2007, and early the next year I sold it to the Voice as my first contribution. For that story, I talked with people of the Southwest Washington Center For the Arts about a proposed performing arts center to occupy that space, designed to attract theater and modest concert tours to Vancouver. It was to help vitalize downtown Vancouver, making it a cultural force to compete with Portland. Now, more than four years later, the lot is still empty.
As I cut through Esther Short Park, I looked up to the impressive structure across the street from its south side. The building was built for, and briefly occupied by, The Columbian. Thanks to the tanking print journalism industry, it too had to be left vacant. Looking at it, I imagined what it would be like to have that building stand as an active host for Vancouver’s daily. And, at the same time, to have a performing arts center presenting plays and musical concerts just a block away. Esther Short would have been at the center of Vancouver’s burgeoning culture.
I had been to the Slocum House Theater many times in the past few years. When I wrote for the Voice, I had asked the editor if I could began writing reviews around the local theater scene. There were only a handful of small theater companies active, as compared to the considerably more massive and versatile scene in Portland. Ah, ever in the shadow.... Still, while I knew next to nothing about the art of theater going in, I enjoyed seeing the productions and giving it my best, meeting cool people, keeping my thumb on the pulse, and seeing good shows. Slocum presented the first show I saw and reviewed: “The Green Room.”
I arrived twenty minutes before curtain, and spoke with director Jim Fully at the box office. As I did, somebody raised a cup of wine to him and said, “To a good run.”
The house was packed, and I was lucky to have been secured a seat. Also, as a bonus, admission that night was free. Thanks to Jim and the good people at Slocum for both. “Greater Tuna” was good fun: a series of loosely-connected comedy vignettes centering around a redneck town in rural Texas. Only two, quite talented actors, took on several roles in different genders (ala Monty Python.) Before the show, I got to see/chat with some friends I had made during my tenure there. At the end of she show, I applauded, then hastened out of there so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye twice.
As I walked out of the theater, the first to leave, the twilight had given to night, and the rain was firm and steady. I’ve always been amazed at how quiet downtown Vancouver is at 10 p.m. on a Saturday. I walked past Tigers Garden and the Starbucks, and they looked like scenes from a Hopper painting. God, I thought, that dream of surging vitality had only been a few years ago! A year ago, in fact. As a writer for the Voice, I got to meet people through the theater, make friends with other staffers and figureheads in the growing cultural scene in Vancouver. I got to enjoy art shows, concerts, parties, the Da-Da. As I walked alone to my car that night, I wondered, was it now floundering, or am I just out of the loop?
A while ago I went to see a movie at the Kiggins (Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think it was) and while enjoying a pre-movie hard cider upstairs, I chatted with my esteemed friend, accomplished photographer and all around Ms. Vancouver Anni Becker, and we agreed that things aren’t quite what they were even a short while ago. I had never been the most comfortable at parties: it’s always been difficult for me to blend in and socialize, and I ended up pinballing between Anni and other friends of mine. Still, now, sitting along and typing this at home alone on a Saturday night, I miss writing for the Voice. Something was growing here, and I miss being a part of it, contributing to it in what little way I could. I had even founded a spoken-word reading session on Sunday evenings at an uptown coffee shop. Few people showed up, it was put on hiatus, and the shop was burnt out. Still, thinking about it now, I think, did I really do that? Mostly, though, I miss the people.
Of course, they’re still around (most of them, I assume), and so is the art. Only, now I don’t get paid to experience it. I guess I’ve found myself being pulled magnetically the way most people seem to have: it was fun, but unless you’re planning on making a living doing this, it’s time to move on. But...nah. These things come in surges, and as long as there are people putting out their art, sometimes a few, sometimes many, there will still be something wonderful in Vancouver. It continues to be a good run.
It was a wet, indigo twilight as I parked along Block 10, the empty lot block just northeast of Esther Short Park. I had written a piece about it for my reporting class at Washington State University in Vancouver back in the fall of 2007, and early the next year I sold it to the Voice as my first contribution. For that story, I talked with people of the Southwest Washington Center For the Arts about a proposed performing arts center to occupy that space, designed to attract theater and modest concert tours to Vancouver. It was to help vitalize downtown Vancouver, making it a cultural force to compete with Portland. Now, more than four years later, the lot is still empty.
As I cut through Esther Short Park, I looked up to the impressive structure across the street from its south side. The building was built for, and briefly occupied by, The Columbian. Thanks to the tanking print journalism industry, it too had to be left vacant. Looking at it, I imagined what it would be like to have that building stand as an active host for Vancouver’s daily. And, at the same time, to have a performing arts center presenting plays and musical concerts just a block away. Esther Short would have been at the center of Vancouver’s burgeoning culture.
I had been to the Slocum House Theater many times in the past few years. When I wrote for the Voice, I had asked the editor if I could began writing reviews around the local theater scene. There were only a handful of small theater companies active, as compared to the considerably more massive and versatile scene in Portland. Ah, ever in the shadow.... Still, while I knew next to nothing about the art of theater going in, I enjoyed seeing the productions and giving it my best, meeting cool people, keeping my thumb on the pulse, and seeing good shows. Slocum presented the first show I saw and reviewed: “The Green Room.”
I arrived twenty minutes before curtain, and spoke with director Jim Fully at the box office. As I did, somebody raised a cup of wine to him and said, “To a good run.”
The house was packed, and I was lucky to have been secured a seat. Also, as a bonus, admission that night was free. Thanks to Jim and the good people at Slocum for both. “Greater Tuna” was good fun: a series of loosely-connected comedy vignettes centering around a redneck town in rural Texas. Only two, quite talented actors, took on several roles in different genders (ala Monty Python.) Before the show, I got to see/chat with some friends I had made during my tenure there. At the end of she show, I applauded, then hastened out of there so I wouldn’t have to say goodbye twice.
As I walked out of the theater, the first to leave, the twilight had given to night, and the rain was firm and steady. I’ve always been amazed at how quiet downtown Vancouver is at 10 p.m. on a Saturday. I walked past Tigers Garden and the Starbucks, and they looked like scenes from a Hopper painting. God, I thought, that dream of surging vitality had only been a few years ago! A year ago, in fact. As a writer for the Voice, I got to meet people through the theater, make friends with other staffers and figureheads in the growing cultural scene in Vancouver. I got to enjoy art shows, concerts, parties, the Da-Da. As I walked alone to my car that night, I wondered, was it now floundering, or am I just out of the loop?
A while ago I went to see a movie at the Kiggins (Raiders of the Lost Ark, I think it was) and while enjoying a pre-movie hard cider upstairs, I chatted with my esteemed friend, accomplished photographer and all around Ms. Vancouver Anni Becker, and we agreed that things aren’t quite what they were even a short while ago. I had never been the most comfortable at parties: it’s always been difficult for me to blend in and socialize, and I ended up pinballing between Anni and other friends of mine. Still, now, sitting along and typing this at home alone on a Saturday night, I miss writing for the Voice. Something was growing here, and I miss being a part of it, contributing to it in what little way I could. I had even founded a spoken-word reading session on Sunday evenings at an uptown coffee shop. Few people showed up, it was put on hiatus, and the shop was burnt out. Still, thinking about it now, I think, did I really do that? Mostly, though, I miss the people.
Of course, they’re still around (most of them, I assume), and so is the art. Only, now I don’t get paid to experience it. I guess I’ve found myself being pulled magnetically the way most people seem to have: it was fun, but unless you’re planning on making a living doing this, it’s time to move on. But...nah. These things come in surges, and as long as there are people putting out their art, sometimes a few, sometimes many, there will still be something wonderful in Vancouver. It continues to be a good run.
Tuesday, February 21, 2012
Good morning.
Okay, it's about time I did one of these things because I need an outlet to compose on a regular basis. I might say something interesting, depending on who you are and what you consider interesting. Honestly, I don't consider my opinion to be significant to anybody besides myself, but maybe you'll see something you like. The point is, I need to have a place to rub one out occasionally (snicker) and don't expect postings with any regularity. For now, it is three in the morning and I must go before I get started so that I can make something of the day tomorrow before I go to work.
Here it is. Take it or leave it.
Here it is. Take it or leave it.
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