Review Summary: A lush sounding album from the pop/jazz singer at the height of her soothing powers.
Since her songs have become the backdrop for many an advert for women's clothing or a cheesy holiday montage, it's easy enough to forget that Norah Jones actually does write good music. Feels Like Home sees the jazz-tinged pop vocalist at the height of her powers, simultaneously improving on her debut album Come Away With Me and ensuring that she wouldn't ever quite reach the balance found in this record again. Which, while making it kind of frustrating to be constantly disappointed with every new album I hear of hers, is more a testament to the quality of this album than the lack thereof in her others.
Opener 'Sunrise' immediately showcases one of Jones' oft-overlooked strengths, and that is the sumptuous production that elevates even the quieter moments on her songs into ones to be admired. As the bass and jazzy drum brushes herald the continuation of Come Away With Me's mellow vibe, every instrument in the mix is balanced so perfectly that one could almost forget the focus of the record; Jones' voice. As it enters around ten seconds into the album, it's warmth reminds you exactly why her songs continue to be such radio stalwarts to this day. Vanilla lyrics aside, the melodies and tone of her voice on this album make each song immediately comfortable to slip into, and as soon as the refrain of Sunrise hits, you know that Jones is onto yet another winning radio single.
But while that's often used as a derogatory term in the douchebag pretentious music fan circles that I admittedly frequent, here it's more a seal of her quality as a songwriter than anything else. Sunrise is a concise opener, and the structure (verse, chorus, verse, chorus, instrumental version of the vocal melody, chorus) sets up the entire rest of the record. The whole affair is pretty predictable, but, again, that merely adds to it's comforting vibe rather than diminishing the album's quality. Even though Feels Like Home never outright surprises, it does at least do it's best to keep mixing things up, with songs ranging from being guitar-led to having sparse instrumentation underlying Jones' sultry tones.
The strangest compliment I can pay the album is that it doesn't really have a standout track. It might not really be an 'album's album,' in that it certainly doesn't need to be sampled as a cohesive whole, but it's not the album of a few singles and then filler that one might expect. In fact, at forty six minutes, it runs for longer than a typical pop album of its kind, and there is absolutely no sign of it dragging, even by the excellent final track. It seems that the album manages to escape the typical trappings of a radio-friendly poppy record, and the quality drop inherent in that group, simply due to Jones herself; her voice and her melodies prevail, even when the instrumentation is lacking (such as Creepin' In, being the only track that stands out, but for the wrong reasons).
Overall, I'm not really sure how Norah Jones manages to make this album so appealing to an admittedly sceptical listener such as myself, but I was won over as soon as the vocals to Sunrise started. No matter what you musical persuasion is, this is an album that won't change your musical life, but it will be a nice cushion at the end of a hard day, no matter what kind of mood you're in. Best experienced with a mug of hot chocolate.
