Thirty years on from her influential self-titled debut, Rickie Lee
Jones will release her 12th studio album Balm In Gilead on October
6th. As previously reported, the album sees her reunited with producer
David Kalish, the man behind her critically acclaimed 2003 comeback
The Evening Of My Best Day, and contains a number of songs that Rickie
has written over the past 25 years. One track in particular, 'Bonfires
In Hell' is a beautifully simple, brokenhearted love song that she
recently performed on an Argentine TV show on acoustic guitar with
only upright bass for accompaniment. Currently reeling from a bad
relationship breakup, you can tell that Rickie really means every
word.

The other two songs previewed so far include 'Wildgirl', a song she
wrote for her daughter Charlotte's 21st birthday, and social
commentary folk-rap 'Rehab'. Introducing 'Wildgirl' during her May 9th
performance at Lilac Festival in Rochester, New York, Rickie told the
crowd: I started writing this song before [her 1989 album] Flying
Cowboys it was one of the first and then I finished it a week before
my daughter's birthday. My mother passed away 2 years ago but she
always liked singing this song about a wild girl in a red dress.

'Rehab' is possibly inspired by American playwright Lanford Wilson's
own Balm In Gilead, a 1965 production that centres on a New York café
that plays host to thieves, heroin addicts, and male and female
prostitutes. And, of course, given the biblical nature of her last
work, The Sermon On Exposition Boulevard, the relevance of the album
title to the Book of Jeremiah is clear. A working title for one of the
other songs is 'The Downtown Suite'. (Wears The Trousers.com)


While speaking with her friend David Tibet (Television) the two were
waxing on the healing properties of the journey of music that she was
finishing up. "It is like a balm," she said, "even when the songs go
to the darkest places. The feeling is: if there is a sun, I will watch
it rise." The inherent sorrow that leads to courage is left unspoken.
The record is upbeat; the songs are accessible in a way Jones' recent
work may not have been to everyone. While certainly each record is
very different from the one before, they all share a raw emotion and
powerful vocal identity. Jones' voice is better than it has been,
maybe than it has ever been.

Jones intricately weaves a thread of disarming vulnerability through
Balm in Gilead's exquisite story-songs. The album's charms include the
R&B-flavored opener "Wild girl" which harkens back to the old Rickie
Lee, with a mother's love - older and wiser, "The Gospel of Carlos,
Norman and Smith (lololo)" which artfully widens the lens on society's
racial injustice and its bottomless human ramifications; "Old Enough"
(a duet with Ben Harper) is also classic Rickie Lee Jones, with its
irresistible punchy horns that somehow miraculously transforms pain to
joy and the stunning "The Moon Is Made of Gold", a star-dusted
acoustic jazz gem, written by her father decades ago. The tune, with
its gorgeously simple lyric and magical melody will be undoubtedly be
covered and sung a hundred years from now. Other highlights include
the emotionally raw and heartbreaking "Bonfires", the gorgeous ambient
"His Jeweled Floor" on which she plays all the instruments except bass
and accordion and the wild-dog howl of "Blue Ghazel".

Thanks for posting this, Rickie's albums are always worth checking out,
some of them are A+

PIRATES is an A+ album in my book...