Rickie Lee Jones

The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard, the new album by Rickie Lee Jones and her first for New West Records, is a beauty--soul-satisfying and sonically unique. Rickie Lee sounds completely tapped in, alive and vital, heading down some mighty interesting roads and discovering new magical essences. Lots of creative sparks here--plenty of them. She sounds like she's going through a transformation throughout the album in a way that's reminiscent of Van Morrison's performances on his classic album Astral Weeks. What will certainly be most striking to some fans about The Sermon on Exposition Boulevard is that it rocks harder than any album the two-time Grammy Award winner has ever recorded. "Nobody Knows My Name," the striking opening track, might best be described as "minimalist pure pop punk rock," and the evocative, riff-'n'-hook-filled, stream-of-consciousness rant titled "Falling Up" follows in a similar decidedly art-rock manner.