Rickie Lee Covers/Covered

One of my all time favourites, Rickie Lee Jones, is back with a new album. "The Devil You Know" comes out in the UK on Monday. It is her third album of cover versions following "Pop Pop" (1991) and "It's Like This" (2000), and from what I have heard of it so far it sounds pretty good to me.

To be honest I would rather have another album of her own material building on "Balm In Gilead", which for me was her best album since "Traffic From Paradise". But I am not going to complain. Anything is better than nothing, and Rickie Lee being Rickie Lee she always brings something a bit different to a cover version, and more often than not it works.

So in anticipation of the new album, here are three of my favourite moments from her catalogue of covers. The first two are from old Merseybeat bands, and on the third she teams up with the Blue Nile to remake an old song of theirs. To hear her and Paul Buchanan singing together is just too much.

"For No One" - Rickie Lee Jones

"Don't Let The Sun Catch You Crying" - Rickie Lee Jones

"Easter Parade" - The Blue Nile with Rickie Lee Jones

I am not aware of all that many cover versions of Rickie Lee songs, and I've certainly never heard one that matches the original - maybe she is just too unique to reinterpret successfully. But here are three of the more valiant events. The originals come respectively from "Flying Cowboys", "Traffic From Paradise" and her self-titled debut album.

We start with Daryl Braithwaite, who took "The Horses" all the way to number one in Australia in 1991. Redbird are an occasional aggregation made up of Kris Delmhorst, Jeffrey Foucault and Peter Mulvey, and this is from last year's "Liive at the Cafe Carpe". We finish off with some French jazz - the horror! the horror!

"The Horses" - Daryl Braithwaite

"Stewart's Coat" - Redbird

"On Saturday Afternoon in 1963" -  Perrine Mansuy Trio

If you are asking yourself whether it could be that Daryl Braithwaite, you know, the lead singer of Sherbet - well, yes it is.