No other media outlet in Montreal has so many people on hand to provide expert coverage of the Festival International de Jazz de Montréal. Many of us are scouring the outdoor site and concert halls: Jacob Langlois-Pelletier, Frédéric Cardin, Stephan Boissonneault, Michel Labrecque, Varun Swarup, Vitta Morales and Alain Brunet bring you their album reviews and concert reports. Happy reading and listening!
Norah Jones is the main pop star of the Blue Note recording company, mainly dedicated to jazz. A sort of exception to the rule. It must be said that Norah Jones’s atypical journey is a mixture of pop, country and jazz.
His first album, Come Away With Me, had incredible commercial success by skilfully flirting with these three genres. Norah Jones knew how to combine intelligence, singularity and success. She has continued her trajectory for twenty-two years with albums that are sometimes more jazz, sometimes more experimental and sometimes more pop. There have been some excellent records and some more ordinary.
Which brings us to Visions, its ninth studio opus, released on March 8 of this year. We are coming back to it because Norah Jones will occupy the great Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier at Place des Arts two evenings in a row, with “our” Martha Wainwright as the opening act.
Many of my colleagues in the Montreal music press seem to have appreciated Visions. For my part, I must say that I was rather bored during the first half: songs written with an identical framework, a voice which seemed to me less intimate, less sensitive and more distant than in previous offerings. A rather pop and retro-soul album built with multi-instrumentalist and producer Leon Michels.
However, in the second part, the arrangements become more diversified, brass and other instruments are added and we feel that Norah Jones is exploring more emotional registers. I just Wanna Dance, I’m Awake, On My Way, Alone With My Thoughts, are very pleasant pieces to listen to. These “visions” of Norah Jones were inspired by the beginning of her nights, where sometimes sleep and reality merge.
Visions won’t necessarily go down in history, but fans of Norah Jones will surely have a good time. For my part, I preferred Little Broken Hearts (2012), the very jazzy Day Breaks (2017) and even the somewhat gloomy Pick Me Up Off The Floor (2020). And Come Away With Me(2002) remains such a fresh first album.
A matter of taste.
What does the daughter of Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar and a producer from Texas have in store for us in concert? She can draw on the best material from her multifaceted career. We’ll see.
