"Contradictory" doesn't cover this billing: Norah Jones at the Hard Rock. Hard? Rock? Norah? Even Norah was amused: "We don't really rock that hard."
Which doesn't preclude her from being maybe the coolest chick on the planet.
Sure, she's been over-hullabalooed, as if she invented musical quietude and introspection, when she simply gave it a fresh sheen. But amid enthused wolf whistles attesting to her exotic eroticism, the ethereal babe with the smoke 'n' honey purr had this "We love you, Norah!" house—more baby boomer-packed than the Joint normally sees for a 25-year-old performer—under her gentle spell.
Following a folky, friendly opening set by guitarist/balladeer Amos Lee—who tweaked the audience with quips like, "And the crowd goes mild!" and "I wish you knew my songs so you could request them"—Norah and her Handsome Band took over. They canvassed much of her breakout album, Come Away with Me, and recent follow-up, Feels Like Home, in a bluesy-mellow 90-minute set.
Shifting from electronic keyboard on the easy groove of "What Am I To You" to piano for the wispy "Nightingale," Norah engaged the crowd with low-key banter, at one point conducting a demographic study of her Vegas fan base—tourist or local? (About 50-50.) Riding the seductive, Arabian-style pulse of "I've Got to See You Again," she was sensuously bathed in a come-hither red glow, guitarist Adam Levy's piercing riffs falling like shards of sex on a sweltering night.
Several covers (the loping soul of Gram Parsons' "That's All It Took," and Tom Waits' "Long Way Home") were highlighted by Hoagy Carmichael's "The Nearness of You," freshening a tasty chestnut, her voice an echo of romantic knowingness beyond her years. Upping the energy, she prowled the stage for the locomotive, country chug-a-chug of "Creepin' In." And "Don't Know Why" came with a twinkly anecdote about dueting with Elmo on Sesame Street. Audience gusto coaxed them back for a pair of encores.
Norah Jones' voice most effectively reaches into the lonely, yearning heart, and in live performance, she manages to turn the audience into one collective soul. The lady vibrates with a mysterious, recessive magnetism.
That's hot, in the coolest sense.