The Paul Zollo Blog: On Rickie Lee Jones, The Budos Band, Jascha Hoffman, Gary Calamar, Terre Roche, and Sandy Ross

Rickie Lee Jones

The Other Side of Desire

A new album by Rickie Lee, in my life and world, has always been a reason to rejoice. From the amazing debut through successive masterpieces, her song and soul have always been momentous, linking to my life – and those of those I know – in poignant and joyous ways. And it is that intersection of the poignant and the joyful that is where her music lives, and why it resonates so deeply.

It’s been a few years since her last one, so it seems that songs have been steadily building in her songwriter soul, needing release, not unlike when George Harrison did All Things Must Pass after years of holding back a river of song.

The new album is about Rickie’s new home, New Orleans. Long an Angeleno, a denizen of all these streets from the east side to the west, she was living in a house above Malibu (with a horse) the last time I interviewed her. But she’s always seemed like a restless soul, and this move has obviously been a shot of love to her songwriter heart, as this new chain of songs makes evident. These are all beautifully realized, dimensional, soulful songs – the kind of songs, sparked and charged by her remarkable vocals (both lead and harmony) – that answer all those forever asking why nobody makes meaningful music anymore.

It all starts with a song that is classic Rickie Lee: Pure exultation meets human poignancy. “Jimmy Choos” is about a character spending her time in the darkness – at the Motel Six, at truckstops – but delighting in this shining symbol of light, a pair of expensive Jimmy Choo shoes. Here’s a woman up on her “hot tin roof” – beautiful expression of time and place, like a great novel, even bringing in much French mixed with language as it is in the streets and homes of that town (it starts so lovingly, “O Cherie..”) – throwing pop bottles down on the cops. It is genius songwriting – set against a beautiful sunny G major melody with a vast melodic range, a melody that would challenge most singers, yet it is easy and right for Rickie Lee. She shows us a little movie, so lovingly detailed that we can see it clearly. Then she adds her own admission, which brings the whole thing home: “I know about giving up on yourself/ You don’t have to tell me about giving up.” The compassion in that line, and its endless acceptance of human weakness, brings a whole dimension to this album, and all her music, that most never touch. She’s always been about hope, about holding onto those rainbow sleeves of romance and heart even when life is dire. Especially then. And it’s an expression of unconditional love, as she ends the song on a hypnotic pedal-tone of sustenance: “Someone loves you tonight,” she repeats. “Someone loves you tonight.”

For that song alone, this would be well worth the price of admission. But that’s just the start. “Valtz de Mon Pere (Lover’s Oath)” is a beautiful song that sounds like traditional folk, punctuated by the great banjo of John Porter. “Infinity” is so haunting, set against a beautiful repeated melodic riff, with lyrics that tell, in a way only she can tell, how all of our lives are played against this unchanging timelessness of space and time, here known as infinity, though we are in such incremental situations constantly, living through every second, as on the train that starts the song, or the sad, empty bar where she finds herself. It’s stunning, musically and lyrically, and points to the yearning in this songwriter to push the boundaries of what a song can be, what it can say, what it can mean. She’s been doing this for years – expanding the potential of what a song – and language itself – can contain and express. “Infinity” also contains one of her most beautiful bridges, a delicate melodic structure that is delightful to experience.

“Christmas in New Orleans” is another gem. Starting off sounding much like a Tom Waits song, it quickly establishes itself as pure Rickie Lee, forever calling up the living and ghosts to congregate together, exemplified so beautifully in the haunting New Orleans ragtime funeral band sound that joins her for the ending of the song.