Disc of the day: 15-11-09

Rickie Lee Jones: Balm In Gilead (Fantasy 0888072317604)
A little break from jazz proper for some compatible folk-rock-country with swing overtones, and guest slots from Bill Frisell as well as Nashville types like Vic Chesnutt and Alison Kraus, and Ben Harper.

This is perhaps a more conventional album stylistically from Rickie Lee but a more consistent and comfortable set of songs than some of her other releases over recent years.

There’s some lazy swinging stuff in the Peyroux vein courtesy of The Moon Is Made Of Gold, written by Rickie Lee’s father, some slow, measured spiritual music in His Jeweled Floor, some pretty straight Nashville in Remember Me and some of the that Muscle Shoals-tinged R&B in Wild Girl.

The Blue Ghazel is an instrumental with some honking baritone saxophone, and the closer, Bayless St, could be a Celtic classic folk song were it not another Jones original.