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There is a familiar concept banded around in musical circles known as "The difficult second album". It is a phenomenon that rightly haunts many artists and there is good reason for it.

Imagine you are a band or artist struggling round the circuit for years writing your material as your own whim and desire takes you, testing those songs in front of live audiences for years and then one day it happens, the contract is signed, the studio is booked and a successful album ensues. What could be better?

Well very little, the problem arises a year later when the men in the suits call a meeting with you to say they want a follow up album that pushes you even further into the public eye, a few more singles like the last ones and a worthy follow up to the debut album. Now you have to replicate in a matter of months for this album what it was that you spent years over for the first album. Hence the concept of a difficult second album.

Often in a rush to follow up the success of a debut, the second album can often be over thought, over worked and over played in an effort to distil the essence of the first and deliver it in larger portions, until the product sounds like a totally unrelated act. It is therefore pleasing when you venture tentatively into the uncharted waters of a follow up album and find that there is no excessive fussiness, no over exuberant aim to please and what you are being offered is an extension of the reasons that you bought the first album but with enough originality that is not just a derivative. Such an album is Norah Jones', "Feels like Home."

It should be particularly admired of her that instead of rising to the role of new found celebrity that she found thrust upon her after her debut album, "Come Away With Me" won eight Grammy Awards, she played down the fuss and got on with creating more of the cool, smooth vibes that got her noticed in the first place.

Unlike the vast majority of female pop solo acts, and there are currently far too many, Jones is schooled in a less obvious tradition for a pop star, having studied for a degree in Jazz Piano at the university of North Texas. Whereas the likes of KT Tunstall and Vanessa Carlton seem to be influenced by the seventies wave of female artists, Jones music seems to have more in common with the likes of Billie Holiday. That said there are some subtle musical genres also thrown in to the mix this time round, most notably an obvious dash of country.

"Sunrise" opens with such a feel, laid back and spacey,

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