Come Away With Me

Twenty-two-year-old Norah Jones is old before time, at least in musical terms anyway. Her debut album Come Away With Me is steeped in the great jazz, blues and soul artists of yore rather than the more contemporary confessions of the new singer songwriter set.

Problem is, that for most of the time on Come Away With Me, Jones sounds just like a 22-year-old with a Nina Simone fixation rather than the real deal. It could be that she has yet to love and lose like her heroes, but the album’s 14 tracks are mostly lacking in any degree of depth – nearer in spirit to the lobby of a Holiday Inn than the smoke filled room of a New Orleans jazz club.

Much of the blame can probably be laid at the door of the material she has chosen to record, most of it written by her backing musicians, and none of it offering her obvious talents the opportunity to shine.

On the up side, her handful of covers of more established songs are really quite good. Hank William’s ‘Cold Cold Heart’, Carmichal’s ‘The Nearness Of You’ and especially a sultry version of Simone’s ‘Turn Me On’ are all handled with great aplomb, suggesting that Norah Jones should concentrate on the standards for a while and give her own personality time to develop.