She's

By JAY COCKS

Same old story. A unique gift, a fresh voice, a knack for psychic immolation. When Rickie Lee Jones broke onto the scene with her surprising and successful 1979 debut album, she seemed to signal a fresh trail for rock. But uncertainty and self-destruction crowded close. An equivocal second album was followed by an enterprising third and diminishing commercial returns. Confusion enveloped her, and Jones seemed to lunge toward the flash point. Then she pulled back, in a two-step away from the brink, consolidating and reconsidering her work. With personal turmoil put in perspective, Jones produced a new life and a new record.

There is nothing unique about any of this, of course, except for the way Jones writes about it and sings it. In Flying Cowboys, her first album since 1984's The Magazine, she sets down a kind of mystical confessional, full of allusive autobiography and reflective nonchalance. It has the breadth of an important book and the emotional impact of great rock 'n' roll.

Even the casual listener who knows Jones mostly from her 1979 hit single, Chuck E.'s in Love, will recognize the smoky snap of her voice in the opening moments of the fine first track, The Horses. But just as quickly, the changes will be obvious. The jazz inflections and beat intonations are still intact, but all the mannerisms have been pared away. Jones isn't hiding behind artifice anymore. Her lyrics may be enigmatic, her music an eccentric mixture of rock, electrified hipster jazz and reggae, but she makes it all flow by the sheer force of her feeling.

Flying Cowboys has a musical sheen and precision new to Jones. That may be partly the work of her producer, Walter Becker (of Steely Dan), but the songs here are tightly and cunningly constructed into a diary of spiritual loss, quest and endurance. The record is so intense that when Jones sings Love Is Gonna Bring Us Back Alive, a nifty reggae tune, the optimism cuts deep because so much that's come before has been so unsparing. The song is a victory cry from a performer who almost counted herself out. Now she's back, looking like her old self: the most gifted woman on the scene.