Word: jazzed
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...York in 1951 was “a new reality” for Alcalay, or a full-bodied assault on his artistic sensibilities. Amidst the skyscrapers and the “madhouse” of Times Square, always with “jazz pounding in his head,” he was stunned and momentarily unable to shake free...
Jones sold 8 million copies of Come Away with Me, her lovely, unpretentious 2002 debut. While that's an incredible figure for an album by a previously unknown jazz pianist and singer, it does not really convey the extent of Jones' ubiquity. ZZ Top once sold 8 million records, but you could avoid Eliminator by staying out of biker bars. Come Away with Me--by virtue of being inoffensive, authentic and really good--was inescapable. If Jones wasn't laying down a mellow vibe for your latte, she was providing the sound track for your dinner party, the theme...
What Jones wanted for Feels like Home was a shot at the life she signed up for originally. Except for an adolescent flirtation with heavy metal--"I loved Motley Crue for a period of about two years," she says--Jones grew up dreaming of being a jazz singer. (Her dedication was such that at the University of North Texas, she recalls taking just two classes outside the jazz-studies major--astronomy and sex ed--and, she says, "I may have dropped both of them.") It wasn't just jazz music that hooked her but also her imagined sense...
...kind of an exuberant dork. Jones often complains that Come Away with Me was "too mellow" and "too cool" and that Feels like Home sounds like a correction. The tempo is noticeably jauntier, and the band is more confident, even roguish, as it wanders in and out of jazz, country and bluegrass riffs. Jones also sounds significantly less precious. She perfected an innocent sensuality on Come Away with Me, but on songs like What Am I to You? and the terrific In the Morning, Jones proves she can do sex and jealousy without compromising her aura of propriety. There...
...Jones can repeat the cultural dominance her first album achieved. For one thing, she won't be filling her days with phone interviews and photo shoots. For another, multiplatinum-sales phenomena like Come Away with Me have a logic all their own. Buying the first album by a beautiful, jazz-inflected underdog was an act of self-definition. Buying the second album by a charming, known commodity shows nothing more than an interest in pleasant songs expertly sung. Feels like Home is equally as good as its predecessor, yet for external reasons, it may seduce only half as many listeners...