Blog: PopMatters

Rickie Lee Jones's 11th album shows inspiration, but only fitfully. Balm in Gilead opens with a song called "Wild Girl". Combining massed harmony vocals, doo-wop finger snaps, and skeletal jazz guitar chords, Rickie Lee Jones propels the song's unconventional structure with her unique, airy voice, building to a stirring yet understated climax. It's a hell of a way to begin an album, but the effect is diminished somewhat by the next song, "Old Enough". Here she teams up with anonymous lantern-jawed singer-songwriter Ben Harper (more...