Rickie Lee Jones

On Rickie Lee Jones, the beret-wearing, boho-pop singer looks and sounds like she just walked out of a Jack Kerouac novel. Her between-the-cracks singing style -- a mixture of childlike wonderment, jazzy affectation, and almost sobbing intensity -- has its moments, and her songs strive for poetic intimacy. The debut sculpts her quirks into slurred, bebop-light pop tunes such as "Chuck E.'s in Love" and "Danny's All-Star Joint." But for the next decade, glossy production would sanitize her unwashed visions, and the studio-pro fussiness of the more open-ended Pirates and the overly self-conscious The Magazine now sounds dated. The looser approach adopted on Girl at Her Volcano, a stopgap collection of covers including an audacious remake of the Left Banke's wimp-pop classic "Walk Away Renee," suggests what might have been. Flying Cowboys, overseen by Steely Dan's Walter Becker, is less grandiose, and Jones' more mature songwriting and singing filter out the affections that marred the earlier albums. Pop Pop offers intimate lounge-jazz interpretations of a dozen standards, though Jones lacks the technical expertise to completely pull it off. But there's also a sense that she's breaking off a piece of her heart with each line, as she personalizes everything from the Tin Pan Alley standard "Bye Bye Blackbird" to Jefferson Airplane's "Comin' Back to Me."

With Jones taking over the production, Traffic From Paradise continues in a more intimate, jazz-inspired vein, centered on acoustic instruments and fleshed out with subtle orchestrations. But discipline is lacking: The alluring fragments rarely coalesce into memorable songs. Ghostyhead is even more shapeless, a misguided detour into a trip-hop world dominated by spooky atmospherics and decorative programming, but no actual songs. It's Like This retools more pop standards to less startling effect than on Pop Pop. Some of the vocal tics are toned down on The Evening of My Best Day, which presents Jones in elegantly orchestrated settings. This rather transparent attempt at sophistication errs on the side of caution, as the arrangements' all-consuming loveliness never once pushes Jones or the songs outside the comfort zone. Even the anger underlying "Tell Somebody (Repeal the Patriot Act)" is undermined by toothless instrumentation. Two live albums present solid career overviews: Naked Songs, including a disturbing new original, "Altar Boy," offers an unplugged perspective, and Live at Red Rocks presents full-band versions, including a duet with Lyle Lovett. (GREG KOT)