The New Norah

After starting a family, the singer-songwriter returns with a ‘sneak attack’ LP that tackles dark times and her famous dad

- Jonah Weiner

IN A COUPLE OF DAYS, NORAH JONES will put on a cape and dance her ass off for a few hours. She’s in Los Angeles, booked to shoot a video for her turbulent new single “Flipside” – the singer songwriter’s first clip in which she busts moves. “It’s a really fun song to dance to – I was dancing when I wrote it,” Jones says.

The shoot’s not until Sunday. Right now it’s Friday evening and Jones is in a back room at a cozy studio in Santa Monica, where she’s about to play an hourlong set for a few hundred people, drawing heavily from her excellent new album, Day Breaks. “I was rehearsing the video yesterday and, man, my heart rate hasn’t gone that high since I was a kid,” Jones says. I ask her to describe the choreography. “JeffVandiver?” she says, name-checking the kitschy Eighties-era fitness-dance entertainer. Jones’ friend and collaborator Sarah Oda, standing nearby, whips out her phone and dials up a vintage Vandiver clip on YouTube. “I do some shit like that,” Jones says, laughing.

Jones is an artist rarely associated with heightened heart rates: Nearly 15 years since she released Come Away With Me, her Grammy-munching, 11-mi l l ionselling debut, she remains a proven master of mellowness. On tracks like “Flipside,” however, she was inspired by chaotic world events to shake things up: “The refugee stuff in Europe, gun violence in our country, terrorist attacks, the tension between the police and the African-American community and people getting shot – this last year’s been intense,” she says.