Flying Cowboys

After a five-year hiatus from record-making, Rickie Lee Jones soared back with her adventuresome *Flying Cowboys* in 1989, and its eclectic tracks were noticeably different from the beatnik stylings of her early work. With Steely Dan’s Walter Becker at the production helm, Jones dipped her toes into reggae (“Ghetto Of My Mind”), street-corner doo-wop (“Rodeo Girl”) and spacey jazz (“Atlas’ Marker”) with wide-eyed seeker’s spirit. Travel, in fact, is a reoccurring theme here: the expansive Southwestern vistas of the title tune shade over into the ominous urban landscape of “Ghost Train” and the ragged trailer-park ambiance of “Away From The Sky.” There’s a worldly-wise sort of tenderness to these lyrics, whether Jones is singing to a child (“The Horses”) or a lover (“Love Is Gonna Bring Us Back Alive”), and the summery glide of “Satellites” catches Rickie at her most beguiling. Her vocals pour out warm and easy, wrapping bruised emotions in a blanket of cooing, billowy notes, helped by sympathetic arrangements, emphasizing tropical percussion, fluid acoustic guitars and dabs of synth-strings. *Flying Cowboys* may not have matched the commercial success of her first two albums, but track for track, it ranks near the top of her work.

Five years after the disappointing The Magazine, Rickie Lee Jones returned to form with Flying Cowboys, which shared much of the playful, childlike charm of her debut, Rickie Lee Jones, and some of the musically diffuse, lyrically ambitious form of its follow-up, Pirates.