A concentrate of emotion at the confluence of Blues and Jazz, in a very personal blend, Pirates is the most sophisticated in its writing and production among all of Rickie lee Jones’ albums, and the one that highlights at the utmost the artist’s creativity, her originality and extraordinary fragility as well. It is also with Pirates that Jones completes the assertion of her musical personality and unique touch, definitively shutting down all comparisons that she had previously suffered.

Jones embroides her unique phrasing (based on growls and barely whispered words chaining with unpredictable brassy outbursts of voice which fully reveal the artist's exceptional organ's potential) by confronting it with passionate, atmospheric and multidirectional compositions. Each contains several writing intentions, a disconcerting approach for the ear on first listening, but bewitching finally because of these surprising intersecting melodic lines. A true musical treasure hunt, that demonstrates all of the American musician's originality and songwriting talents, and her innate eclecticism.

Pirates notably offers Traces of the Western Slopes, Jones' most ambitious and greatest composition, co-written and sung with Sal Bernardi. A jazzy reverie lasting more than eight minutes, benefiting from extraordinary instrumentation, which makes the soul wander above Los Angeles’ light-saturated ribbon-like urban freeways. A masterpiece that makes us share Jones’ fantasy world, peopled with emblematic vagrant post-beatnik youngsters, stoned buddies and young pre-Grunge tramps, wandering companions of all the empty-eyed "Lolitas" who exorcise, across Californian megalopolis’ wastelands, the shattered fates of the American Dream.

Rickie Lee Jones' third must-have is about cowboys with wings. Released in 1989, Flying Cowboys is the album of maturity. The ex-rebel, illuminated by motherhood, gives free rein to all her writing talents in an unbridled, "free-style", uninhibited and tender poetry, paying a strong and moving tribute to her little daughter Charlotte with The Horses track that opens up the album.