Rickie Lee Jones

Rickie Lee Jones' Pirates arrives like a cloudburst in the desert of Eighties formula pop
music and recycled heavy-metal rock. Explosively passionate and exhilaratingly eccentric,
this freeform, piano-based song cycle compares with Van Morrison's Astral Weeks, Bruce
Springsteen's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle and Joni Mitchell's Court and
Spark in the bravura way it weaves autobiography and personal myth into a flexi... More >

Crossing Springsteen and Waits from a male-identified female point of view, Jones doesn't let on whether she's narrating or evoking. She slurs like a convinced lush. Her impressionistically structured, jazz-tinged studio arrangements are the El Lay equivalent of art-rock. In short, she writes and sings and composes as if she has something to hide. From herself, most likely. (Grade: C+)