June 12, 2020
Norah Jones didn’t mean to make another album. After she finished touring 2016’s Day Breaks — her beloved return to piano-based jazz — she walked away from the well-worn album cycle grind and into an unfamiliar territory without boundaries: a series of short sessions with an ever-changing array of collaborators resulting in a diverse stream of singles (with Mavis Staples, Rodrigo Amarante, Thomas Bartlett, Tarriona Tank Ball, and more). But then an odd thing happened. Slowly but surely, the session songs Jones hadn’t released congealed into that very thing she’d meant to avoid — an album, lucky for us. Because Pick Me Up Off The Floor is not some disjointed collage. It holds together beautifully, connected by the sly groove of her piano trios, lyrics that confront loss and portend hope, and a heavy mood that leans into darkness before ultimately finding the light.
“Every session I’ve done, there’ve been extra songs I didn’t release and they’ve sort of been collecting for the last two years,” says Jones. “I became really enamored with them, having the rough mixes on my phone, listening while I walk the dog. The songs stayed stuck in my head and I realized that they had this surreal thread running through them. It feels like a fever dream taking place somewhere between God, the Devil, the heart, the Country, the planet, and me.”
Sure enough, just as this set of songs blurs sonic colors (blues, soul, Americana, and various shades of jazz) it also swirls the personal and political, specific pain and societal trauma, into one mercurial body. Even the album title’s meaning seems to shift. The words “Pick Me Up Off the Floor” at times play as a plea for outside intervention, as on the spare yet bewitching opener “How I Weep,” where Jones mourns an untold loss over pensive keys and humming strings. But in other moments the phrase feels like a bootstraps-style statement of purpose, as on the rootsy “I’m Alive,” made in Chicago with Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy (and his son Spencer on drums), where Jones slashes her own silver lining into the haze of the modern news cycle: “She’s crushed by thoughts at night of men / Who want her rights and usually win / But she’s alive, oh she’s alive.”
“Living in this country — this world — the last few years, I think there’s an underlying sense of, ‘Lift me up. Let’s get up out of this mess and try to figure some things out,'” says Jones. “If there’s a darkness to this album, it’s not meant to be an impending sense of doom, if feels more like a human longing for connection. Some of the songs that are personal also apply to the larger issues we’re all facing. And some of the songs that are about very specific larger things also feel quite personal.”
The title also dovetails neatly with the way these songs came together. While Jones’ singles series continues, and several were rounded up for 2019’s Begin Again mini album, Pick Me Up Off the Floor makes magic out of the music that could have been left behind. Wanting to spend more time with her family and recalling the thrill of creating on the spot with Danger Mouse for 2012’s Little Broken Hearts, Jones launched her new approach in early 2018: a session a month with a different singer, player, band, or engineer. Instead of her usual methodical process, she’d prepare very little and have no expectations: if a collaboration bore fruit, great; if not, no big. The backbone of this album was formed early, in the especially fruitful second session with her go-to drummer Brian Blade and bassist Christopher Thomas — they made seven songs in three days.
Three of those ended up here: “Hurts to Be Alone,” a slinky soul-jazz number that finds Jones on piano, Wurlitzer, and Hammond B-3 organ; the sadly waltzing “Heartbroken, Day After,” which builds to a cinematic end; and “Were You Watching,” an eerie dirge whose mysterious verses were cowritten by Jones’ real-life friend, poet Emily Fiskio. That collaboration also shaped what would become Pick Me Up Off the Floor. Inspired by Fiskio’s work — plus all the Dr. Seuss and Shel Silverstein she’s been reading to her kids — Jones wrote her own poetry apart from music for the first time, and pulled from it during various sessions. Blade also pops up throughout: with veteran bassist John Patitucci on the stormy “Flame Twin,” and Brazilian Girls bassist Jesse Murphy on both the brass-blessed “Say No More” and “This Life,” which showcases a particularly haunting vocal from 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,” says Jones, who put the final touches on Pick Me Up Off the Floor in early 2020 — some strings here, some harmonies there. By completely rethinking the way she made music, Jones discovered a new wellspring of inspiration, with the fortunate if unexpected result of making an album of tremendous depth and beauty that she was not trying to make.
Unpredictability has been a hallmark of Jones’ career from the start. There was, of course, her astounding 2002 debut Come Away With Me, which spent 164 weeks on the charts, swept the Grammys, and ignited a mainstream love for thoughtful, jazz-steeped acoustic pop. Many artists would just repeat that recipe for success, but Jones never settled into a single sound or mode. She began other projects from indie band El Madmo, to alt-country outfit Puss N Boots (who just dropped their second LP, Sister), to 2013’s Foreverly, a set of Everly Brothers covers with Billie Joe Armstrong. She appeared on songs by Herbie Hancock, Foo Fighters, OutKast, Willie Nelson, and Sharon Van Etten, and many more. And each of her albums broke whatever mold she’d set with the last one. It’s been a journey we’ve all been happy to go on — a clear sense of inspiration runs through it all.
Despite how Pick Me Up Off the Floor began, these 11 songs present a journey too. While a certain existential dread creeps through the mix, hope arrives with “To Live,” a swaying spiritual Jones originally wrote with Mavis Staples in mind: “If love is the answer, in front of my face / I’ll live in this moment and find my true place.” The clouds part further in the final two songs. Amid the ambling drums and pedal steel of “Stumble on My Way,” our host is worse for wear but on her feet again. And on “Heaven Above,” a gorgeously dreamlike Tweedy team-up, Jones seems to at last reach a place of peace — acceptance of the things we can’t change, and gratitude for the good that we get. In that way, Pick Me Up Off the Floor offers catharsis to anyone who gets caught in its warm embrace.
