Album Review: The Other Side of Desire by Rickie Lee Jones

Locating to New Orleans has done Rickie Lee Jones a power of good: it hasn’t quashed her eccentricity. Seemingly only too aware that she’s a name from the past (in an album trailer she faces the camera and yells, “Because I’m no longer important any more you don’t want to fuck me? Fuck you!”) RLJ digs deep to prove that she’s a badass. The red beret may be in the closet but Jones is out and about, chucking bottles off a roof in Jimmy Choos and dancing though the ruins with her vulnerability on show in Valtz De Mon Pere and J’ai Connais Pas.

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Times could hardly be tougher for commercially overlooked types like Rickie Lee Jones, who funded this album through a PledgeMusic campaign and by selling off old stagewear. It ends a 10-year writing drought: finally struck by the urge to make new music after three LPs of covers and re-recordings, she’s looked to her newly adopted home, New Orleans, for inspiration. The city has got under her skin in subtle ways, however, and it takes digging to discern them.

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