Record of the Day: Rickie Lee Jones, “Naked Songs”

Rickie Lee Jones
“Naked Songs” (Cd Reprise 9362-45950-2)

One of the greatest American authors together with Joni Mitchell and Laura Nyro, Rickie Lee Jones has a vast discography to her credit made up only of beautiful records, to be listened to and jealously preserved from the first to the last (if your budget doesn’t allow it, you can turn to the splendid Rhino anthology, “Duchess of Coolsville”).
However, if I had to focus on just one title, I have no doubts that the ideal would be this extraordinary live album made solely with voice and guitar (except for two songs with Rob Wasserman on double bass) where his songs are stripped (as the album title suggests) by the magnificent arrangements that Rickie builds in the studio, often performed by the best musicians on the scene.

On stage, only her and her incredible expressive intensity, her multi-colored voice, at times sweet and fragile, at others strangled, at others still transformed into a scream that sends shivers down the spine.

The heartbreaking melancholy of “Altar Boy”, the desolate panoramas of the immense night highways in “The Last Chance Texaco”, the frozen and lifeless characters of “Coolsville” are contrasted by the energetic images of “We Belong Together” and “It Must Be Love”, the maudit figures of “Weasel and the White Boys Cool” meet the ironic and swinging malice of “Chuck E’s in Love”.

It is precisely listening to these versions stripped down to the essentials that gives us the exact measure of how good Rickie Lee Jones is; we cannot
they are tricks, in recordings of this type the compositional structure holds or doesn’t hold and the almost sacred silence, the intense concentration that the audience places while listening to the songs before exploding into warm applause testifies that the ground on which one moves is solid and fertile.

Like her former partner Tom Waits, Rickie Lee also has the rare ability to put her soul on display.
without hesitation, walking the tightrope and not caring about technical perfection to squeeze every drop of expressiveness from his songs that hide behind simple harmonic turns and memorable refrains a very complex writing, of great refinement, in which the blues, jazz and rock influences blend together giving life to an artistic result that has few equals in the world music scene.

Carlo Boccadoro, composer and conductor, was born in Macerata in 1963. He lives and works in Milan. He collaborates with soloists and orchestras in different parts of the world. He is the author of numerous books on musical subjects.

This text is taken from “Lunario della musica: Un disco per ogni giorno dell’anno” published by Einaudi, courtesy of the author and the publisher.