MOG

I have been listening to one album almost exclusively for the last week. I keep hoping a review will gel in my mind for me to post. I'm not sure it has gelled. But I am sure that I cannot sit on this review any longer.

A little over a week ago, I heard something about Rickie Lee Jones putting out a new album. I did a quick search on the web and found, sure enough, that her new album had come out a few days earlier. (How do these things slip by me???) So one week ago, I dragged Ronni out to dinner and then to Barnes and Noble to pick up the new album, The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard.

The more I listen to this album, the less I feel able to say about it. It has sucked me in, and each time through (and I've listened through it at least two or three times a day since I've gotten it), it pulls me in deeper. So much so, that I'm not sure there is language to describe it. Not language that does it justice.

The album has a number of very catchy, easily accessible tracks. In fact, the first three tracks of the album do a wonderful job of pulling in the listener. "Nobody Knows My Name" opens the album with some simple, driving guitar chords before Jones' distinctive voice comes in to start the story. "Gethsemane" relies more on percussion to drive itself into the listener's head. It's insistent. It demands your attention. And then "Falling Up" comes along. It is no less engaging. But it's chorus gives the illusion of being something lighter than it is. It's deceptiveness invites repeated listenings until you realize that it's firmly planted in your mind, and isn't letting go.

The fourth track shifts our focus. What is going on with the album, the naive listener (one who hasn't heard the story behind it, and who wasn't focusing too much on the words before) might be wondering. "Lamp of the Body" begins with a slow, raw musical scape. And then Jones' voice half-sings, half speaks "Watched you journey into the wilderness to listen to John the prophet you called the baptizer..." (The catchy tracks do not end with the first three, but after you hear track four, you can't help but reevaluate everything else you are going to hear and everything you've heard.)

This album, which the ear says is so clearly Rickie Lee Jones, the mind and spirit say is something else, too. Jones explains in the liner notes: "The inspiration for the songs came from Lee Cantelon's book, The Words, a modern rendering of the words of Christ. Many of the songs on the completed CD are first-take improvisations..."

The album had started with Lee Cantelon wanting to record a spoken-word version of his book. He invited Jones to come in and do a few tracks for the project. Again from the liner notes, this time, in Cantelon's words:

Rickie arrived in the early afternoon. She looked at the book and after mumbling a few lines said, 'You know, I think I would rather try to do something else. Let me sing.'

She was purposefully obtuse, would not say what she wanted to do. 'Can we get a level?' She hummed about four bars and said, 'That's enough.'

I asked if she waned to hear the song first, but she declined. 'Just play it,' she said.

...and she said, 'Let's go. Be ready. Get it right, because it will be right the first time.'

And it was. We recorded 'Nobody Knows My Name.'

Cantelon goes on to describe a wonderful story about the recording of the album we actually get, rather than the spoken word project initially conceived. That project sounds quite interesting. But the album we get feels inspired, divine.

This is not an album for Christians. Or, I should say, not an album simply for Christians. There is something wonderful here that reaches beyond dogma and into the spiritual. This doesn't feel like a religious album to me. It feels as though it is channeling something deep in the human psyche and bringing it up for us to more easily touch. (I often find this to be the case in Jones' work, and Cantelon's project must seem, in retrospect, a perfect fit as a result.)

On the surface it is a terrific rock album (with the requisite folk, etc. sensibilities that Jones always brings to her work). But the magic that Jones and Cantelon (and all the others who poured themselves into this project) strike in recording comes through in each track. And it simply demands to be heard.

I fear I've said too much and given you bad ideas about what this album is. If it doesn't sound appealing, then I've screwed up, and you should go listen and make up your own mind. On the other hand, I fear I've said too little, and you still aren't sure. If so, go find a copy and find out for yourself. I myself simply want to get back to listening.