Pirates

iTunes Review

After scoring a hit single, a platinum album and a Grammy award on the first try, Rickie Lee Jones felt the pressure of topping herself. She responded by releasing Pirates (1981), an ambitious album of expansively-arranged songs that showed definite growth. Here, Jones returns to the hipster street-scenes of her debut release, but this time she takes a more cinematic approach in her stories of stumbling dreamers and hapless romantics. Tracks like “We Belong Together” and “Living It Up” are intricate song-suites, full of tempo changes and instrumental flourishes. Her fondness for wordplay and telling lyric details keeps the action moving; just when the music swells mightily, she adds an intimate aside or scats with girlish abandon. Whether Jones is narrating a family tragedy (“Skeletons”) or trying to mend her own broken heart (“Lucky Guy”), she keeps the tone of Pirates on the bittersweet side. The exception is “Woody And Dutch On The Slow Train To Peking,” a jive-talking excursion through the funkier regions of L.A. Tinged with melancholy but ultimately redemptive, Pirates is a masterfully-conceived work that leaves no doubt about Jones’ gifts as a singer/songwriter.