Rating: 5/5
Review:
A fine album
I really like this album.
I confess that I haven't really been aware of Rickie Lee Jones since
enjoying Chuck E's In Love very much, so it's been a long gap, but I'm very
glad to make her acquaintance again.
This is a varied and in places rather quirky album with some
great stuff on it. The variety of just the
first four tracks gives an idea of what to expect: Jimmy Choo is a great, smooth, jazzy song
with some very distinctive vocal work; Valtz de Mon Pere is a lovely New
Orleans-tinged love song; J'ai Connais Pas sounds like a really good Fats
Domino song (and the backing certainly owes more than a little to Blueberry
Hill); Blinded By The Hunt is a soulful, bluesy and very affecting song which
puts me rather in mind of Randy Crawford…and so on. I don't like everything here, but everyone
will have their own favourites and it's a matter of taste rather than musical
quality, which is excellent throughout.
Rickie Lee Jones is a great singer. She has been around long enough now to be
able to put a song over with real skill and meaning even though her voice
really isn't what it was - she sounds a bit like an eight-year-old with a cold
on I Wasn't Here, for example. However,
she varies the quality of her voice excellently (I get echoes of Bjork,
Marianne Faithfull and others in various places) and the effect is often just
great; For example, I find her sometimes cracked, trembling quality on
Christmas in New Orleans very affecting.
It's an object lesson in performance, I think and the result is really
special in parts of this album.
I have given it five stars because of this, even if there
are some weaker moments (to me, anyway): the majority is very good indeed and
some is really great. It's a fine album
overall and warmly recommended.
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