There's a theory, usually put about by the affectedly eccentric amongst us, that madness is close to genius; that there's an oddity or a lack in every truly brilliant figure. Singer-songwriter Rickie Lee Jones isn't mad, but if there's any truth in the theory, she's at least touched by genius.
Dressed like a middle-aged, all-American schoolteacher who's put on thick old clothes (badly fitting jumper and flower-print trousers), and carelessly pinned her hair back for an art class, Jones, apparently unaware that it's hot enough for cacti to flourish, demands the air-conditioning be switched off. "The wind's blowing on me. Not THE wind, the internal wind; the wind created by something within the crowd," she says, with the vision and gestures of one who's always left the door to the kookie ajar.
But, like Bjork, the fact that her universe has more hidden passages and spiral staircases than the rest of ours is more than just a byproduct of her talent; it's inherent to it. Out of the jagged pains and f**k-ups of working class Americana, Jones constructs a skewed bohemian mythology: tales of hobos and bohos, narratives of gritty realism seen through magic realist eyes.
In the late seventies and early eighties - the period half of tonight's set is from - she captured a moment that maybe was never real, but was always believed in. So, during the street scene snippets of the slow-burning anthem 'We Belong Together' or when 'Living It Up' climaxes in a half-wistful, half-triumphant chorus, you can't help but remember a youth of tatty folk and jazz clubs and street corners, drinking gin and scoring whatever was going - never mind that you were born in 1980 and spent your childhood sipping orange juice and going to church.
But during your childhood, Jones wasn't that much hipper, abandoning the arty folk rock for uninspired albums of jazz standards and covers. Thankfully, tonight, the covers, sensibly left to the end of the set, are limited, and all are well-fitting, off-the-peg garments which her voice, a sharpened, sweetened Joni Mitchell embrace, moulds to fit her exactly: pepped-up in a version of Steely Dan's 'Showbiz Kids', syncopated and breathy for 'Street Where You Live'.
As the evening draws to a close, she offers another anecdote, a memory of her brief residence in France: she jumped on a car that had parked in her way and attacked it. Slightly odd, yes, but the theory was obviously right.
