Post Description

If you're a long-time fan, you know that many of Rickie Lee's best records (1983's 'Girl At Her Volcano' and 1991's 'Pop Pop') can sound a little jarring and polarizing at first, but over time they grow on you in ways only few records can. In many respects, the gothic and stark 'The Devil You Know' follows the tradition, even dropping a telling clue ("puzzling you/is the nature of my game"). The record is a unified and uncompromising collection of tunes written by others songwriters as masterful as Jones herself (Jagger/Richards, Van Morrison, Donovan, Neil Young). You'll like that her voice is kept up front and center and how the breadth of it creates tension by hinting at the music's depth while obscuring it at the same time. This record is also how I listen to Jones as an artist--when she's uses a sense a theatre to render her music. Her most vivid roles are haunted and grotesque characters ("Playing With Fire", "Sympathy For The Devil", "St. James Infirmary"), but provide amazing contrast to the bulk of songs, which are full of heart-rending solicitude and compassion {"The Weight", "Only Love Can Break Your Heart"). You may like Jones' neat trick of weathering already old songs with world-weariness in her voice and sparse sonic flourishes (her own inimitable invention: Western impressionism schooled in jazz). If I'm correct, the "devil" Jones' has sold her soul for is not so much breathing new life into already beloved songs, but her willingness to upend enshrined performances perhaps once mistaken as definitive readings. 

01.Sympathy For The Devil.flac
02.Only Love Can Break Your Heart.flac
03.Masterpiece.flac
04.The Weight.flac
05.St. James Infirmary.flac
06.Comfort You.flac
07.Reason To Believe.flac
08.Play With Fire.flac
09.Seems Like A Long Time.flac
10.Catch The Wind.flac