Norah Jones has come a long way since her sophistipop debut, Come Away with Me, the 2002 album that soundtracked middle-class dinner parties for the best part of a decade. Jones, now a darling of the Grammys, has gathered a motley crew of collaborators over the past 20 years, from Foo Fighters to Belle & Sebastian, and from Ray Charles to OutKast, and even recording an Everly Brothers covers album with Green Day’s Billie Joe Armstrong.
One of her more recent endeavours has been a podcast, Norah Jones Is Playing Along, on which she improvises impromptu songs with various well-known musicians. It seems that she has brought some of that freewheeling, anything-goes spirit into her ninth studio album, too; much of Visions has a looseness that sounds like the result of Jones and her producer Leon Michels simply having a jam in the studio. The soulful Muscle Shoals clatter of Paradise and Staring at the Wall are early highlights, while the jazzy collision of brass, piano and Hammond organ on I Just Wanna Dance strikes a pleasingly mellow tone. Most of these songs were apparently written in that late-night moment before sleep, hence the title – and after its downbeat predecessor, Pick Me Up Off the Floor, from 2020, it’s a welcome departure from morose fare.
Still, on some songs here Jones sounds as if she’s emerging from an embattled period of life. Queen of the Sea sees her sing “You made a mess out of me, but I’m finally free,” and that thread of self-empowerment runs through to I’m Awake (“Remember when I lost control? / I lost my soul / I’m finally awake”). Like a fever dream, Jones tosses and turns between apparent contentment (All This Time, Alone with My Thoughts) and melancholy, yet the biggest issue with Visions is that each conflicting emotion is delivered in the same dreamy tone. True, it’s a lovely tone, with well-played instruments, those distinctive caramel vocals and even (as heard on the laid-back opening track) the sound of birds twittering in the background. The problem is that “lovely” sounds more like “forgettable” with every listen.
