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July 15, 2009 - Norah Jones started it when she asked her lover to "come away" with her. Her invitation has been imitated, spoofed (remember Nellie McKay's Get Away From Me?) and now turned into a puzzling enigma. In "Take Me With You," young Canadian singer Kate Schutt — who comes from the same indie-folk/jazz/soul school as Jones — sings a come-on in glassily clear and glossily sweet tones: "Take me with you when you want to / Take me with you when you don't." Her instrumentation features a lovely jazz piano, horns that alternate between ominous and subdued, and a strummed guitar.

But it's always clear what Jones is singing about; Schutt is another matter. "Take Me With You" crosses into some weird territory — "You can tell 'em I'm your cousin / No, they don't ever need to know" — but the takeaway is that she just wants to hang around, no matter the circumstances, without regard for her own feelings. She's just happy to be there, getting no firsts (only "second kisses") and letting "smoke roll over" her from… well, that's not entirely evident. In the process, Schutt captures the unsettled nature of love affairs where nothing makes sense, and her eerily understated delivery illustrates that nicely.

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