Just as some of the best recorded music is the result of experimentation, some of the best albums can come about accidentally. Norah Jones just put out a solo album last year and an album by the trio Puss and Boots this year, so “Pick Me Up Off the Floor,” her eight studio release was not expected so soon. Says Jones: “I don’t know if I was just in a zone or if this process turned it on, but I’ve felt more creative in the last year than I ever have,”

The new album came out of her self-proclaimed singles series, where she would release a new song every few months with different collaborators. Those songs were compiled on her last album but there were a number of songs from those sessions that she didn’t release and began to realize that the leftovers formed a cohesive album of their own.

Behind her bassist Christopher Thomas and drummer Brian Blades, she worked with many different producers and musicians but rather than sound different, these songs hang together as if they were all recorded for the same reason.  Her trademark Jazz/Americana sound is enhanced ever so slightly as each song adds in a celtic fiddle or a funky guitar or a dignified cello.

It’s the first album of all her own compositions and as the title “Pick Me Up Off the Floor” hints, she sings of pain, loss and the hope that darkness will eventually give way to light.  Call it serendipity, or just plain coincidence, Norah Jones puts the pieces of this puzzle together into one of her best albums.

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