Irish Timeswriters review Norah Jones at the Point and Mark Ronson at The Village.
Norah Jones, Point, Dublin
Like a comedian who doesn't know when to leave a good punchline alone, Norah Jones' support, M Ward, lingered over song lines and wallowed in his own arrangements (annihilating Bowie's Let's Dance en route) with such self-indulgence that one suspected he'd be as happy with a mirror as with a half-full Point Theatre for an audience.
More country smoothie than jazz queen these days, Norah Jones trades in a neat line of comfort music that'll soothe jangled nerves, baste fragile egos and even wrap them in cotton wool, if that's what's called for. Surprisingly perky on stage, Jones exudes an air of one who knows what the rules of the game are, and plays them by the book, although she never quite succeeds in working up a sweat in the process.
Jones' four-piece band circle around some challenging arrangements occasionally, particularly on I've Got to See You Again, Andrew Borger's percussion jousting with Daru Oda's flute and Lee Alexander's double bass, but mostly, they opt to shimmy and sigh seductively beneath Jones' small but perfectly formed songs.
Boxes were ticked from her opener (more a bouquet than a salvo), Come Away With Me, so polished and serene that it lowered the collective pulse in microseconds.
Although her voice is even more spectacularly velveteen live than on record, Norah Jones' emotional range is limited, and bears few of the marks of experience yet, so there were hardly any ragged edges to be seen on her new material. Still, Little Room, complete with mini piano, whispered of a Randy Newmanesque taste for fairground dissonance that augers well for the future, if she chooses to mine it a little deeper.
Her cover of Gillian Welch's My First Lover was refreshingly muscular, and Tom Waits's The Long Way Home lumbered along at a disturbingly pleasant pace, but ultimately, Jones' late valentine, Don't Know Why wrapped the night up with a bow that could easily provide the soundtrack to an extended luxury automobile advertisement: exceedingly attractive, easy to watch and listen to, but without a shadow of an afterthought to ponder over. Still, if it's soporific music you're after, Jones can write it to order. - Siobhan Long
Mark Ronson, The Village, Dublin
Whatever your thoughts on Mark Ronson, the now-unavoidable London-born, New York DJ and producer whose funk and soul revisions of pop hits have put his stamp indelibly on 2007, you wouldn't wish him physical harm. Unless, of course, you were a Smiths fan.
"I want to stab you in the eye," wrote one less than happy correspondent in the wake of Ronson's utterly fantastic cover of Stop Me If You've Heard This Before, one that converted Morrissey's wry aloofness into R&B fervour then segued insouciantly into You Keep Me Hangin' On. (Supremes fans have been generally more tolerant.)
Ronson's agenda is as effective as it is simple: that music nerds should be allowed to dance too. His appearance in The Village, shifted from the much larger Olympia, may suggest that not everybody is convinced, but tonight he proves there is no idea in indie rock that can't be funnelled down a brass section and turned into a party.
A diffident, boyishly attractive hipster, Ronson the studio artist is still adjusting to the spotlight. Standing out in a white T-shirt from an eight-piece band dressed in uniform black T-shirts printed with their names, Ronson, the latest manifestation of the producer as star, is otherwise hard to distinguish.
Over the gripping funk workout of Inversion and Coldplay's God Put a Smile on Your Face, the brass section drowns out his itchy guitar lines. But it's the hum of his Rolodex that seems more muted - when Amy Winehouse, Lilly Allen and Christina Aguilera are your collaborators, no one thanks you for showing up with Australian R&B crooner Daniel Merriweather and Boston rapper Wale.
Together they sound less worldly and menacing than Britney Spears on Toxic, but Merriweather's hand-on-heart performance is the precise counterbalance that Ronson's knowingly groovy treatment of Radiohead's Just needs.
That the band depart from the stage immediately after it - six songs in - leaves the crowd a little stunned; it takes a while to register that the set has ended. The encores, an impossibly funky Valerie and the peerless Stop Me, just about atone, but those of us worked up over Ronson have not been properly worked out.
You'd leave his eyes alone, but maybe consider giving him a flick of the ear. - Peter Crawley
