Rickie Lee Jones' Cocktail Party Voice
It's Like This
February 10, 2001
by David Abrams

Rickie Lee Jones has an intimate voice that feels like it’s just you, her, the stage, the acoustic guitar and the spotlight. It’s a bluesy, slurring voice that slides around the scale with shocking versatility. It’s a voice that croons, “C’mon over, baby, and curl up with me.”

You either accept the invitation with slavish devotion (as I’ve been doing since I heard “Chuck E.’s In Love” back in 1979) or you say, “No thanks, I’ve got a date with Britney Aguilera.”

Jones’ sporadic releases have run a wide gamut—from the heartbreaking (Pirates) to the ecstatic (Flying Cowboys) to the nice-try-but-no-thanks (Naked Songs). The most intimate songs (“Skeletons,” “The Horses”) have come from Jones’ own pen, but she’s also taken other songwriters’ classics and made them completely her own. In 1991, she released Pop Pop, a mellow acoustic lineup of standards like “Hi-Lili Hi-Lo,” “I’ll Be Seeing You” and “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Like a similar retro-release by Sinead O’Connor one year later (Am I Not Your Girl?), I thought it was good…but not great. Still, I had to admire both women for going so completely against the marketing grain by releasing such uncommercial albums.

Now, Jones is back with another group of oldies, It’s Like This. Thanks to the high-energy work from the assembled studio musicians (including Joe Jackson, Ben Folds and Taj Mahal) and crisp production by Jones and Bruce Brody, I prefer this CD over the earlier Pop Pop.

Jones glides and glissandos with take-no-prisoners confidence through the eleven songs on It’s Like This. She’s all over the pop chart, bringing her distinctive spacey slur to songs by Steely Dan, Marvin Gaye, the Beatles, Traffic, Hoagy Carmichael, George Gershwin and Lerner and Loewe. She even manages to make room for Charlie Chaplin’s enduring, endearing “Smile.”

With the mellow jazz of songs like “On the Street Where You Live,” “I Can’t Get Started” and “Someone to Watch Over Me,” this is the background CD to play at this year’s cocktail parties. Plug it in after serving the clam dip and you’ll have guests swaying to the sultry retro-beat in no time at all. Every now and then, they’ll probably be stopping in mid-sway to check the corner of the room where they expect to see Jones with her guitar and spotlight.

For even greater intimacy, the package also includes a bonus CD with two live tracks: the legendary “Chuck E.’s In Love” and “Company.” Jones proves how far removed she is from the slick overproduced pop divas when she forgets a chord during “Chuck E.” The moment is funny, natural and makes me want to go curl up beside her.