“Good morn­ing,” Norah Jones’ sul­try voice opens before con­tin­u­ing “my thoughts on leaving/are back on the table.” Instantly the mood is set — this isn’t just anoth­er dose of enjoy­able gener­ic diet jazz, this is real.

Little Broken Hearts is a record about love, loss, anguish, heartache, infi­deli­ty, and revenge. Over the course of the album’s 12 tracks, Jones cap­tures to per­fec­tion the melt­ing pot of emo­tions left in the wake of her recent breakup. The elo­quent pro­duc­tion cour­tesy of Brian Burton (aka Danger Mouse), who shares writer and com­pos­er cred­its, gives air and space to Jones’ emo­tion­al vocals.

Norah Jones became a house­hold name when her debut album hit store shelves in ear­ly 2002. Jones fol­lowed up her debut with a string of pleas­ing, if some­what gener­ic, releas­es in the same vein — until she shook things up a bit with 2009’s The Fall, an album that showed a lot of poten­tial, but not a lot of consistency.

With Little Broken Hearts Norah Jones has cre­at­ed an album that more than deliv­ers on the promise of The Fall — and arguable also the most imme­di­ate, inti­mate, and evoca­tive descrip­tion of the end of a rela­tion­ship on record. 5.0 out of 5.0 stars5.0