Duchess of Coolsville
July 2005
by Stevin McKewin

Ever fall in love with an album or artist, spend lots of quality time listening to their music and then, for some reason, put the discs (or LPs) away?...

Until years later, you happen upon that music again, and the passage of time and its new presentation make it sound like you're hearing it for the first time...and it's every bit as good as it was in the past?  Maybe even better?  Well, obviously, this has just happened to me, and I never saw it coming.  

The new Rickie Lee Jones anthology Duchess Of Coolsville has just been released, and for me it fills in about a two-decade long hole from the present day back to 1981, when her second album Pirates was released and I apparently stopped listening to her.  In the intervening years, Jones released seven albums that were riddled with experiments in jazz, beat poetry, swing and covers of rock songs and jazz standards - and, of course, that most unique of voices.  The Duchess set doesn't attempt to focus on the development of Jones' style over the years by arranging the songs in chronological order, nor does it clump songs together by their style, tempo, or lyrical content; the songs are presented essentially in random order - that is, alphabetically (from "A Tree On Allenford" to "Woody And Dutch On The Slow Train To Peking") - and a song from 1979 might come right before or after one from 2003.  

Listening to Duchess in its straight track order is kind of like listening to a full iPod in song-shuffle mode...the unpredictable positioning of songs gives such a startlingly fresh perspective on Rickie Lee Jones' art that even "Chuck E's In Love" sounds new.  I can't stop listening to it, and if you happen by the store this week, chances are that you'll hear some of it, too...it's in the air, so to speak.  Did I mention how great the remastered sound is on the earlier recordings?...or that "Company" is one of the most heart-breaking odes to lost love ever written?...or that RLJ out-Springsteens Springsteen with the car metaphors in "The Last Chance Texaco?"  I'll stop now, I think I've made my point.

- - Stevin McKewin