SLOW BURN.("Come Away with Me" by Norah Jones)(Sound Recording Review)

Norah Jones is apparently very boring. Recent reviews of her new album, "Feels Like Home," use words like "tepid," "blank," and "dull" to describe her music. She has been referred to more than once as Snorah Jones. But there are at least twenty million people who have a different take. Her 2002 debut album, "Come Away with Me," which sold eight million copies in America and ten million overseas, and won a number of Grammys, is the flag waved by record executives every time another article about the end of the music business appears. Like many mega-platinum records, "Come Away" succeeded without the benefit of much critical support, and "Feels Like Home" has sold two million copies in the first month of its release. How her records do what they do is a topic that is annexing its own wing of journalism. Some credit marketing, but record companies regularly promote releases by sending out advance copies to critics, buying ads, licensing songs to Starbucks compilations, and the like. It's what record companies know how to do. Yet the records they push rarely sell eight million copies. Eight million means there are no red states or blue states. Eight million means everyone voted for you.

There are sociological explanations. Critics point out, accurately, that young artists like Jones, who is twenty-five, and Josh Groban and Michael Buble are selling soothing songs by the seashore to a much older audience. These artists' faith in melody and acoustic instruments ostensibly provides evidence that not all musicians below the age of thirty are getting tattooed with runic symbols and sending viruses to each other on tiny, inscrutable batphones. Record companies have agreed to think that the older audience is their pot of gold. This is half science--the percentage of records being bought by listeners above the age of thirty is growing--and half hearsay. Older listeners are continually saddled with the calumny that they are too dumb or scared to download music for free.

There is the aesthetic explanation--Norah Jones and her foot soldiers are organic, grass-fed artists taking back the castle from the injection-molded, polyblend popbots who are accused of a number of crimes against music. (These crimes are often what drew people to pop in the first place, but what are a few false dichotomies when you're mourning your youth?) Jones's sound is distinctive enough to have created its own subgenre, and new singers like Katie Melua, possibly against their wishes, are being sold as post-Norah artists. Jones has managed to make music that is universally useful, like a paper clip, but personal enough that listeners think they discovered it for themselves.

There are two plausible explanations for all this smoke and fire: Norah Jones is actually pretty good. And she is selling the all-time No. 1 hit song--sex.

In many ways, Jones resembles the Nigerian-British pop singer Sade. When Sade debuted, in the eighties, she was given little critical attention. Her unusually fine physical beauty worked for and against her, as did her easygoing music, which didn't seem to fit anywhere exactly. Songs like "Your Love Is King," co-written with a band member, Stuart Matthewman, rode a groove that pushed the sexuality inherent in the fairly obvious metaphors. The saxophone added the aroma of jazz, but Sade's vocals rarely deviated from a restrained, breathy mood.

As with Sade, much of Jones's material is written with her longtime band members, often her boyfriend and bassist Lee Alexander. This means that the people writing the songs are inside the physical experience of the sound. Jones's music, too, is a recombinant blend that could be racked in various parts of the store. The twang in Jones's voice establishes a cosmetic link to country, while the upright bass and piano suggest jazz. Jones is sometimes classed with other female singer-songwriters, like Lucinda Williams, but this is also inaccurate. Jones has ...