It takes guts to stare down a club of drunk guys hollering for "Chuck E's in Love" and instead play a loud, skronky and mostly incomprehensible blend of acid-jazz and trip-hop. But while such aesthetic courage is admirable in a singer/songwriter best known for funky, lighthearted late-'70s pop hits, Rickie Lee Jones didn't deliver her challenging new material very effectively, mostly because she refused to sweeten the medicine with even a thimbleful of sugar.

\\Jones' unexpected new direction, a collaboration with Low Pop Suicide guitarist Rick Boston on her just-released album "Ghostyhead," is occasionally interesting. But instead of introducing it alongside the familiar classics her fans shouted for, she rammed it down their throats with an earnestness that seemed to border on contempt. Even Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, similarly shape-shifting performers accustomed to requests for old warhorses, have eased into new artistic courses more smoothly.

\\An hour after the not-even-close-to-sold-out show was supposed to begin, a belly dancer wiggled her way to the center of the crowd. Cute gimmick, right? Well, she performed for almost half an hour, even though about three-quarters of the audience couldn't see her at all. After that, inexplicably, Jones' road crew decided to change the set around. Jones and her band hit the stage nearly two hours late, facing an audience whose patience had already been tested.

\\Even by the abstract standards of the improvisation-loving Jones, "Ghostyhead" is a difficult album to get through, and it's even more alienating live. Bathed in blue and red lights that obscured her face, Jones began the show singing along to Boston's soft acoustic guitar on the new song "Sunny Afternoon" -- which revealed only that her still-incredible voice deserves far better material. On "Road Kill," for example, Jones sounded like she was critiquing her own performance when she sang the line "What's he trying to say?"

\\The new single, "Firewalker," which begins with the line "Julie got some ecstasy / She laid down on the steering wheel," accelerated like vintage Talking Heads fronted by a more polished singer, but such pleasures were few. Even the most patient electronica aficionado would have been tempted to walk out during the unfocused echoey effects and gratuitous feedback that defined "Vessel of Light."

\\Jones has thrown curves to her audience before -- the follow-up to her 1979 debut was 1981's "Pirates," a depressing, challenging and ultimately rewarding album about death. But by taking the stage so late, delivering unfamiliar material in a generally harsh tone and -- as final evidence of what seemed deliberate inaccessibility -- refusing to play an encore after a