Rickie Lee Jones at the Barbican
Like Bob Dylan, Rickie Lee Jones gives a great deal of ongoing thought to how she presents her songs in terms of musical arrangement. Such care is never allowed to outweigh the feeling of freshness and spontaneity, even when the material concerned is getting on for half a century old, as were the five songs from her debut album, written when she was barely into her twenties, included in last night’s 90-minute set.
Her current touring band includes the brilliant Ben Rosenblum on accordion, piano and harmony vocals, the divine Petra Haden on violin, percussion and harmony vocals, and the very fine Vilray Bolles on Fender Telecaster. It’s a beautifully dextrous and flexible unit, capable of handling the way Jones likes to stretch songs such as the opening “Weasel and the White Boys Cool”, “We Belong Together” and “Living It Up” into woozy mini-symphonies.
Just about everything about the evening was deeply enjoyable, including her very funny introductions and digressions and a couple of wonderful extended solos on the standards she inserted in the middle of the set: deft jazz guitar from Bolles on “On the Sunny Side of the Street”, swooning accordion from Rosenblum on “Hi-Lilli, Hi-Lo”. When Haden and Rosenblum joined Jones for the high harmonies, particularly on “Weasel” and “We Belong Together”, the effect was spine-tingling.
Gradually she drew the audience into a closer involvement, which seemed to deepen when she talked about when she sang “Bonfires”, the very plain, folk-based break-up song which was written for 2009’s Balm in Gilead but sounds about a thousand years old.
The last half-hour was a beautiful slide through “The Horses”, written at the end of the 1980s for her infant daughter, the emotional exposure of “Coolsville”, the gorgeous “A Tree on Allenford” (from 2003’s The Evening of My Best Day), and, as a valediction, the immortal “Last Chance Texaco”. Pretty close to a perfect night.
* Rickie Lee Jones is at the Apex, Bury St. Edmunds, tonight (May 27), Warwick Arts Centre, Coventry on May 29 and the RNCM Theatre in Manchester on May 30.
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