New York City - Deluxe
In this instance, "deluxe collection" denotes six songs that blues guitarist Peter Malick recorded with vocalist Norah Jones before she hit it big, a (previously released) EP's worth of material padded here into a two-disc, 31-cut set of radio edits, club mixes, dub mixes, and DJ remixes, with only eight of them previously unreleased. (There are nine versions of the set-opening "New York City" alone.) The material stretches itself pretty thin, as the equal billing given Jones with Malick (the only two members of the "Peter Malick Group" who appear throughout) aims to attract Norah Jones completists or tempt those who might confuse this with one of her own releases. Malick's four original compositions range from the psychedelic swirl of "Strange Transmission," given a girlish lilt by Jones, to the Rolling Stones/Velvet Underground propulsion of "Things You Don't Have to Do," on which the two duet. Jones rarely oversings the way Malick occasionally overplays, though a cover of Magic Sam's "All Your Love" finds Jones straining for emotive effect in a way that she never does on her own releases.--Don McLeese