Still friendly and folksy, Norah Jones [ tickets ] has made another good album, her first venture toward an electric pop-rock record. It is also her breakup tome, with 10 of the 13 songs solidly addressing the final stages of a romance, the dripping confusion of a break-up's aftermath and the predicaments that come with re-entry into single life.

The reflections on "The Fall" come from her real-life breakup with longtime bassist and romantic partner Lee Alexander, and for the first time in her four-album career, her first-person voice dominates. Jones' songwriting is full of questions and remorse, her head spinning from ruminations about the next chapter. Alternately, she's ruined, lonely, needy and, on "Man of the Hour," finding solace in her pet dog, the theme of the album's artwork.

But Jones also has her wits about her. "I should go back to Manhattan," she sings, "It's just a train ride away/I know nothing 'bout leaving/But I know I should do it today."

Musically, "The Fall" is Jones' first full dive into leading an electric band, splitting her time between guitar, piano and Wurlitzer organ. The smoothness and tempos of her more popular earlier work remain; the electric instruments simply create different framing devices. The polished blues "Stuck" (think Lucinda Williams) and gritty "It's Gonna Be" are the only tunes with gritty rock-and-roll textures.

The appeal of "The Fall" is wholly in line with that of Jones' mega-selling debut. Both records play to her vocal strength, specifically her ability to communicate as if sharing thought over coffee or the last drink of the night. As a communicator, she is not unlike Frank Sinatra, especially on the records he cut during World War II and during his saloon phase in the late '50s. Sinatra mastered directness--that feeling that the singer is communicating to you and you alone--and Norah's purr, especially on ballads, separates her from a long list of singers using their diaries as source material. In expressing pain and indecision, Jones is a master conversationalist.

Like Sinatra, Jones has never fully fit the description of jazz artist, though she certainly deserved it for her sultry cover of Bryan Ferry's "More Than This" on Charlie Hunter's "Songs from the Analog Playground" from 2001. Sinatra and Jones share that jazz-singer touch of never appearing to be threatening, using the phrasing to tell the listener something deeper is happening with the song's character.

A second, more subtle jazz influence involves Jones' variations on mid-tempo. "The Fall" has ballads but none of the music is achingly slow; she's no Jimmy Scott. Compared to other /songwriters working with full bands, her music is on the slow side, but few others strive to find subtlety by varying the count-off of a beat--that's the territory of jazz pianists such as Mose Allison and the late Phineas Newborn Jr.

Over the course of three albums recorded while she was in her 20s, Jones had a floating magnetism. At 30, she is addressing a roadblock, adjusting the sonic treatment and trying a direct approach. A new phase? Possibly. More importantly, the entire album exhales with the breath of honesty.