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TIME: Almanac 1990
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1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso
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time
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102389
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10238900.066
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1990-09-22
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MUSIC, Page 110She's BackRickie Lee Jones ends a five-year silence with a great album
Same old story. A unique gift, a fresh voice, a knack for
psychic immolation. When Rickie Lee Jones broke onto the scene with
her surprising and successful 1979 debut album, she seemed to
signal a fresh trail for rock. But uncertainty and self-destruction
crowded close. An equivocal second album was followed by an
enterprising third and diminishing commercial returns. Confusion
enveloped her, and Jones seemed to lunge toward the flash point.
Then she pulled back, in a two-step away from the brink,
consolidating and reconsidering her work. With personal turmoil put
in perspective, Jones produced a new life and a new record.
There is nothing unique about any of this, of course, except
for the way Jones writes about it and sings it. In Flying Cowboys,
her first album since 1984's The Magazine, she sets down a kind of
mystical confessional, full of allusive autobiography and
reflective nonchalance. It has the breadth of an important book and
the emotional impact of great rock 'n' roll.
Even the casual listener who knows Jones mostly from her 1979
hit single, Chuck E.'s in Love, will recognize the smoky snap of
her voice in the opening moments of the fine first track, The
Horses. But just as quickly, the changes will be obvious. The jazz
inflections and beat intonations are still intact, but all the
mannerisms have been pared away. Jones isn't hiding behind artifice
anymore. Her lyrics may be enigmatic, her music an eccentric
mixture of rock, electrified hipster jazz and reggae, but she makes
it all flow by the sheer force of her feeling.
Flying Cowboys has a musical sheen and precision new to Jones.
That may be partly the work of her producer, Walter Becker (of
Steely Dan), but the songs here are tightly and cunningly
constructed into a diary of spiritual loss, quest and endurance.
The record is so intense that when Jones sings Love Is Gonna Bring
Us Back Alive, a nifty reggae tune, the optimism cuts deep because
so much that's come before has been so unsparing. The song is a
victory cry from a performer who almost counted herself out. Now
she's back, looking like her old self: the most gifted woman on the
scene.