Rickie Lee Jones 4: The Magazine

Her next “real” album took some time, but apparently Rickie Lee Jones found inspiration in Paris, and managed to kick whatever her addictions to record The Magazine. The producer is different, but the sound is still slick, with the reliable Steve Gadd drumming on several tracks and various members of Toto here and there. The big difference is the use of synthesizer, which is subtle, but pronounced in the all-digital recording.

“Prelude To Gravity” is a lovely piano instrumental with light strings, whereas “Gravity” itself crashes in with drums. It’s a very complicated song, with lots of tempo shifts and accents, and poetry we can’t begin to decipher. While it begins like a nursery rhyme, “Juke Box Fury” is more along the lines of her jazz-bo hits. It even has the same hackneyed horn part from her other albums, pinning the choruses, but her vocal blend at the end of each still kills. We’re amazed that “It Must Be Love” wasn’t a hit single, either by her or anybody else, since it’s one of the most perfectly mainstream songs she’d yet written, with just enough of the right ingredients to make it original. “Magazine” recalls the sadder stories from Pirates, and we’re not sure whether the narrator is waiting for a lover or a drug connection.

Those horns return “The Real End”, which seems like a more obvious choice for a single with its simple pre-chorus hook and matter-of-fact cynical lyrics about fleeting romance. There’s a stretch where she layers her own voice like horns, which would have been enough. “Deep Space”, subtitled “An Equestrienne In The Circus Of The Falling Star”, provides another welcome see-saw shift to quiet, especially before “Runaround”, which mentions the “Juke Box Fury”, and sounds like two different songs forced together. The album closes with three pieces called “Rorschachs”. The first is a very European instrumental with trilling guitars and mandolins and a hummed melody called “Theme For The Pope (Marrants D’eau Douce)”, which translates as “sweet water fools”. (There is a version out there sung as a duet with Sal Bernardi—yeah, him again—in French, and seem to describe some lost souls between Memphis and Nashville. We had to look this up, because the lyrics aren’t included on the original vinyl.) “The Unsigned Painting” begins with a lonesome plaint, which is brushed aside by a spoken impressionistic piece. This segues into the more musical “The Weird Beast”, which continues the strange imagery via interlocking vocals.

The album works best when she’s exploring, making the more adult contemporary ear candy seem out of place. The Magazine is impenetrable to be sure, but somehow she makes it all very compelling. The listener wants to understand the songs, and that makes it worthwhile. She’s unique, all right.

Rickie Lee Jones The Magazine (1984)—3