It's not often that a new musician makes as big an impact on the music world as Norah Jones did with her 2001 debut, Come Away with Me.
Although it was a cross-genre jazz album, it managed to blow audiences and the recording industry away with the kind of success that seemed to defy logic. The thought was that only oversexed teeny-boppers, image-defined monsters and established musical giants could win so many accolades and sell so many records.
Still, after collecting eight Grammys - including Best Album, Record of the Year for "Don't Know Why" and Best New Artist for Jones - and selling over eight million copies, the sultry voiced songstress is tempting fate again and seeing if she can get lightning to strike twice with her sophomore release Feels Like Home.
The pressure to record a follow-up album that can meet the expectations set by a debut, multi-platinum album of the year must be horrific. Yet it doesn't seem like either Jones or her producer, Arif Mardin, noticed the stress at all.
Feels Like Home feels like familiar territory, but there is something different. It may be the slight shift towards a more country-sounding album, including a song with Dolly Parton, or it may be the lack of obvious number one singles that riddled Come Away With Me.
Either way, this album stands out as a new record and not a simple extension of whatever formula worked so well the first time around.
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Like in her previous album, Jones' voice is the center of the music but doesn't overshadow the arrangements. Instead the instruments work together to highlight the composition as a whole, creating a unifying sound that never seems overly complicated or bloated with fancy instrumentals. Still, some of the arrangements are incredibly complex.
Although Feels Like Home is a slight departure, the skill and serene confidence that must have gone into making the album just might win Jones and company a few more golden statues to add to the pile.
The most refreshing thing about Feels Like Home is the lack of any sense that it was recorded with the intent of following the success of Come Away With Me. Though the album has 13 songs, it is never bogged down by a feeling that the band was trying too hard or over thinking the process.
The result is an album that extends the Norah Jones sound without becoming a clich of itself.
Jones and her bandmates take what could easily seem like boring lounge arrangements and create songs that are easy on the ears and manage to have a mass appeal and replay value that could find its way into practically anyone's CD collection.
