Issue date: 2/27/04 Section: Arts & Entertainment

Media Credit: Courtesy Blue Note Records The intimacy of Nora Jones´ sophomore album has confused at least one reviewer about his relationship to the artist´s material.

In order for me to review this album, certain editors had to be convinced that I had no conflict of interest. You see, Norah Jones - winner of eight Grammys - is my girlfriend.

While Norah may be unaware of the increasingly romantic nature of our relationship, rest assured that its existence is fully established in the shadowy Italian Bistro of my own mind.

That said, I was nevertheless nervous when Norah's label, Blue Note, informed me - via the Norah Jones fan club mailing list - that she needed to talk to me, On Feb. 10, she did so through Feels Like Home, a personal love letter to me that ingeniously takes the form of an actual album. I'll take you through it, as a public tribute to our love.

A pillar of lasting relationships is communication. Norah communicates superbly, implying the stability of our love by duplicating the tone of Come Away With Me, the Grammy-winning album she recorded to seduce me.

Feels Like Home was recorded with the Handsome Band, those same undeserving, talentless schmucks who appeared on Come Away With Me. As such, the relaxed Southern arrangements of languid blues guitar, light drums and mellow keys remain to punctuate those moments of the album in which Norah has to breathe.

"Sunrise" opens things up with a "we've missed sunrise but it's okay because we stayed in bed together" theme and a chorus of "And I said / Oooo, oooo, oooo / To you." I'm not usually one to kiss and tell, but this is an obvious reference to that time when I woke up at noon with Come Away With Me stuck to my groin.

You see, Norah's lyrics aren't important. They weren't important on Come Away With Me because they weren't usually her own, and they're not important to you on Feels Like Home because they're personally written by her to me.

That's right, Norah's moved past employing Hank Williams to reach my heart; she knows she can trust me with her own words now, and, except for a passable cover of Townes Van Zandt's "Be Here to Love Me," she's got a hand in almost every song's lyric.

Unfortunately, with lines like "Why does it seem / Like a picture / Hanging up on someone else's wall / Lately I just haven't been myself at all," (from "The Prettiest Thing") Norah won't be vying anytime soon for the currently nonexistent "Most Memorable Lyric" Grammy award. But it isn't the lyrics we remembered from the tracks of Come Away With Me, anyhow.

Continued...

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