Norah Jones's new dark streak is a nice touch
Norah Jones's music is beloved for its gentle rhythms and placid melodies, and disparaged for the very same qualities. Not quite jazz and sort of sultry, with a touch of country and a whiff of the blues, it weaves the strands of American popular music into soothing songs that gesture elegantly but never delve beneath their own serene surfaces. They're like desert oases: tranquil, comforting, and in the middle of nowhere.
That's a place lots of listeners want to be; Jones has sold more than 30 million copies of her two studio albums, and has collected eight Grammy awards. Her fans will be thoroughly gratified by every lovely note on Jones's third album, "Not Too Late," which arrives in stores tomorrow . The title track captures the quintessence of the 27-year-old singer, pianist, and composer's gift: Delicate and unsentimental, produced (along with the rest of the album) with blessed understatement by Jones's boyfriend and bassist, Lee Alexander, the song is sweet but not sugary, simple but hardly dim.
Many of the tracks follow in the same mold, some with a dash of twang ("Until the End" and "Wake Me Up"), some with a taste of soul ("Thinking About You," the album's first single, boasts laid-back horns and a shimmering Hammond B3 organ). The jazzy flavors that peppered Jones's previous albums are less conspicuous here, in large part because Jones and Alexander wrote all of the material. Without the Hoagy Carmichael and Duke Ellington covers and the jazz-inflected compositions of her guitarist Jesse Harris (whose song "Don't Know Why" catapulted Jones to stardom), "Not Too Late" has a more consistent singer-songwriter feel.
And that translates to a subtle, but piquant, new dark streak that goes a long way toward lifting Jones's songs out of the realm of background music.
"Wish I Could" tells of two women who adored the same fallen soldier, and Kronos Quartet cellist Jeff Zeigler carves a mournful subtext. "The Sun Doesn't Like You" is a love song set in a prison, and whether the razor wire and dogs are meant to be literal or a metaphor for love's menacing terrain, the tune simmers (albeit just a bit) with a sense of danger. Still more satisfying is "Not My Friend." Jones has never ventured anything quite like this minimalist drama, in which gauzy electric guitar feedback floating beneath the pretty piano and plucked guitar is the very sound of betrayal.
Indie darling M. Ward is guest vocalist on "Sinkin' Soon," a vintage-style, black-hearted saloon song with pots and pans for percussion and a woozy trombone solo that inspires Jones's most vigorous vocal performance to date.
Similarly, "My Dear Country" is a deceptively spry ditty that skewers the Bush administration with vim and flair. It begins on Halloween night -- scary -- and skips ahead to election day -- even scarier. "But the day after is darker/ And darker and darker it goes/ Who knows maybe the plans will change/ Who knows maybe he's not deranged," Jones sings.
Not to worry; America's most polite pop chanteuse isn't going all Dixie Chicks. Ever placating and endlessly even-handed, Jones explains in the song's kicker that "I love the things that you've given me/ And most of all that I am free to have a song that I can sing/ On election day."
Joan Anderman can be reached at anderman@globe.com. For more on music, visit boston.com/ae/music/blog. 
