Norah Jones - Butterflies - Non-Album Tracks (1999-2000)

Norah Jones continues to amaze me. As I've mentioned in this blog several times, I'm not a big fan of many of her official studio albums, but I love her other career, the vast amount of music that has not appeared on her albums. And what especially amazes me is how much of that non-album material there is. I keep thinking I've found it all, and then I find more.

Previously, I had only found a few of Jones's songs from 1999 or 2000. But I've just discovered a bunch more. In 1999, Jones was the sole vocalist as part of a band named "Laszlo." Laszlo only put out one album, and all the songs on it were originals (except for one, "Freak"), but written by other band members. I previously had only found three of these songs, but I was able to find the whole album. I've included all of the songs from it here, except for one, "Your Head's Too Big," because the lyrics for that one are really bad.

This Laszlo album, titled "Butterflies," is totally obscure, to the point that I given up on finding most of the songs on it. But I think it's pretty good. It sounds very much like the rest of Jones's stuff, with a kind of pop-jazz style. But it's more likely and rocking than her usual style, so I actually prefer it. Most importantly, even though the songwriters are totally obscure and apparently only did this one album, the songs are as good or better than those on her later studio albums, in my opinion.

But that's not all. The first eight songs here are from the Laszlo album. The last three are from 2000, and involve Jones working with other musicians. Jones sings lead on all three, and they're just as good. Two of the three are unreleased, but you'd never know based on the sound quality.

This album is 53 minutes long.

01 Beloved (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
02 As We Fall (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
03 Traces (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
04 Song for Samuel (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
05 Wait (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
06 In a Whisper (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
07 Freak (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
08 Butterflies (Norah Jones & Laszlo)
09 Ain't Gonna Ask You (Norah Jones)
10 Angels (Wax Poetic & Norah Jones)
11 Technologie (Wax Poetic & Norah Jones)
12 Purple Elephants (Wax Poetic & Norah Jones)

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In my opinion, given Jones's appealing looks, if you have an album with Jones as the lead singer, it's a no-brained to put her face on the cover. Maybe one reason Laszlo stayed so obscure is that they didn't do that. They titled the album "Butterflies," which I have done here as well, and made the cover some abstract art with a butterfly theme. I used that as the background for my cover, but pasted a photo of a young Norah Jones on top of it. (I'm not sure what year her photo is from). In case you're curious, or want to use the original cover, here it is.

After Jones hit it big and sold millions upon millions of albums, I'm surprised this album was never rereleased, with Jones's name and/or photo on the cover. But apparently that never happened. It wouldn't be false advertising, because she dominates the album.