New Norah Jones CD Out Jan 30

I'm excited -- I thought her country-ish second album was a worthy followup to the monster hit "Come Away With Me." Since she's collaborating with M Ward - and his new CD will definitely be on my best of the year list - I think we can expect Jones to lean back towards pop with "Not Too Late" when it hits stores on January 30. She wrote or co-wrote every song and I hope some of them were done with Jesse Harris, the terrific songwriter who delivered her breakthrough single "Don't Know Why." His pop sensibility -- by which I mean his ability to deliver a tightly written song and a good hook -- was the one element missing from "Feels Like Home" that kept it from being hit out of the park. But I'm just as excited by the news I heard today that Richard Swift is delivering a new album Feb 20. He's very much in the M Ward vein and you can go to his nifty website and hear huge chunks of a lot of his songs.