Having provided background music for a gazillion middle-aged dinner parties the world over, it was always going to be interesting to see how Norah Jones’ particular brand of intimate, sittin’-on-the-dock-of-the-Starbucks music would fare in the vast expanse of the Point. The set has been designed to evoke the homeliness of a living room, with its plush red velvet drapes and extremely nickable lampshades and Jones herself sidles across the stage with a lack of self-consciousness and speaks to the crowd in convivial tones as though at home on the stage.
Jones, who comes across as quite affable given her rather sober persona, generously acknowledges songs that her band members have written for her. It’s easy to hear why they were so inspired; like some kind of immaculate couture creation, her voice hangs perfectly from the frame of each song.
In fact, nothing quite prepares you for the immediacy, the actuality, the subtle yet intoxicating draw of The Voice. She shyly admits that Tom Waits had recently sent her a slew of specially written songs, and it’s easy to hear how even the great man himself became so enamoured with her.
The music itself, on the other hand, seems a little bloodless, a rather sanitised mix of country, folk, jazz and acoustic pop, caught somewhere between Sarah McLachlan and Vonda Shepherd. The audience is suitably chaste and civilised, and predictably only stirs to half-life at the opening strains of the singles ‘Come Away With Me’, ‘Don’t Know Why’ and ‘Sunrise’.
Interspersed throughout the set are softly sung favourites from the Everly Brothers, Gram Parsons and Hank Williams, and it soon becomes clear – the Norah Jones live experience is best suited to those sickeningly, breathlessly and undyingly in love.