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56 of 57 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
No Question, a Masterpiece, January 7, 2003
Rickie Lee Jones' 2nd album marked a radical departure for the beret wearing, Jack Daniel's swilling Coolsville resident. Piano-based and Steely Dan influenced, "Pirates" remains, over 20 years after it's release one of the most haunting pieces of music ever recorded. It marked a creative highwater mark that (unfortunately for all), Rickie has never again reached.
From the opening notes of "We Belong Together", it's clear that this work is much sadder than her debut. "We Belong Together" is every great male-rocking-loner song, with incredible shifts of tempo and texture, and a vocal performance that is gut-wrenching. "Living It Up", with its "Wild, and the Only Ones" chorus and awesome bridge (thanks to a great contribution from Sal Bernardi, Rickie's ex-lover and long term accompaniest), is the musical equivalent of the solemn Brassai photograph that adorns the album's cover. "Woody and Dutch" is the keyboard cousin of Rickie's "Danny's All Star Joint", with caramel coated basslines and cotton candy spun call and response vocals. "Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)" reminds you of why horns are so sadly missed in this era of teen vocals and electronic instrumentation. And the genuine masterpiece of this album, "Traces Of The Western Slope" is a near 8 minute tribute to distant ghosts, vacant eyed dope fiends and sexual awakening, played out with Becker and Fagen inspired instrumentation and Tom Waits like lyrics. No woman has ever written, or laid down a jazz/rock classic that comes near this song.
Between birthdays, Christmas gifts, and replacing copies that I have owned (on 3 different formats), I have probably purchased at least 30 copies of this disc over the years. And yet I still don't feel like I have fully compensated Rickie Lee for the contribution she made to my muscial education with this album. It has grown with me like an old friend, and remains to this day an all time favorite.
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13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Essential Rickie Lee Jones, January 12, 2002
Honestly, her voice got on my nerves back in the late 70's when she debuted with her popular "Chuck E's in Love", so I never really listened to her later material. It wasn't until my musical taste widened and matured that I later went back to some of her compositions and discovered what a very talented lyricist and storyteller Rickie Lee Jones is. Although Pirates was released back in 1981, it remains one of my favorite CDs. It displays Rickie's master songwriting ability and proves her a musical storyteller of high emotional intensity and clarity. Her urban stories are set in a 'groovy', bohemian and vivid blend of folk, blues and jazzy musical compositions. In addition, one selection features jazz artists David Sanborn on alto sax and Randy Brecker on the trumpet and flugelhorn. If you have never listened to Rickie Lee Jones, I highly suggest Pirates as it will move you emotionally and may even get your head shaking, feet stomping and fingers snapping.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
the movie, January 13, 2001
By A Customer
Pirates, the movie, which is what this record is, has not lost much potency as years have gone by. In fact, though the sounds and ideas introduced here have long been taken up and overused, listening now reveals how weird it all was, how we are swept up in the most visual recording I have ever encountered. We learn all of the characters hopes and dreams, we know them instantly - the first sign of a great author. Her credibility as narrator is unquestionable, we know she feels everything and more, and yet we are safe watching our window, and somehow the story is told to us through osmosis as much as anything. Her voice here is like one of the horns, in fact the horn arrangements are hers. Michael Brecker, Steve Gadd, Donald Fagen, many great contributions. Very complex, and sad, yet satisfing, like any great movie, one is left with the feeling that ones own life has a part, you know, in the big picture. this record somehow reminds me of the much later, and much different Ghostyhead. I suppose those same characters, now seperated and less corporal, are still somehow calling from Ms. Jones ethereal world. This record was a five star rated in rolling stone at the time. It is a classic, overlooked by the new media. and though perhaps the production, careful and lovely, has been tendered too many times, if one views it as the film it is, and the creation of language that it was, this should not incumber the experience of getting to know *unt-finger louie and Zero and all the rest of the fluent speakers of blonde. and make no mistake - this is not your mothers car. Quietly obscene language has slipped by the censors in the hands of the sweet-voiced Rickie many times. She is wild, sly, sophisticated, and extremely tender. this is one side of the many-headed beast.
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