JONI MITCHELL
important work in color
1968: Joni Mitchell. 1969: Clouds. 1970: Ladies of the Canyon. 1971: Blue. 1972: For the Roses. 1974: Court and Spark * Miles of Isles (live). 1975: The Hissing of Summer Lawns. 1976: Hejira. 1978: Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter. 1979: Mingus. 1980: Shadows and Light. 1982: Wild Things Run Free. 1985: Dog Eat Dog. 1988: Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm. 1991: Night Ride Home. 1994: Turbulent Indigo.
Joni Mitchell’s art has never fed the fires of a particular type of male sexual fantasizing. Unavowedly feminist, her work is a chronicle of post-pill freedom without the traumas of Looking For Mr. Goodbar psychopaths, murderous adulterers, game-playing neurotics, and the ultimate refuge of family, God and country. Her songs are offered without angst or irony, which gives them an idiosyncratic beauty that, at best, is refreshingly nonjudgmental, and, at worst, a bit light weight. With Mitchell, diary-like detail often prevails over insight. It’s hard too say whether she has been ahead of her time or out of time altogether. Perhaps she is just reflecting a feminine viewpoint that rejects car crashes and retribution as indispensable to entertainment. Unrepentantly upper middle-class, as she is unrepentant about almost everything she does or is, her politics are isolationist (she has been an island unto herself and a few boyfriends), her scope myopic, her tastes expensive, her lifestyle buffered and manicured – although she does occasionally notice that people in Africa are starving. Because she has written largely in an autobiographical mode, her status as a star has diminished: without mystery, an artist cannot be romanticized. All of this makes it rather hard to enjoy Joni Mitchell as a concept; what you see is what you get (i.e. the inside cover of For The Roses which shows Joni standing naked on some rocks by the sea).
On "For Free," Joni is "shopping for jewels" when she notices a bum on a corner, playing clarinet real good for free. "The Arrangement" is a bit harsh coming from Mitchell: "you could have been more …/more than credit cards/a swimming pool in the back yard" – it’s anti-bourgeois criticism coming from a haute-bourgeois. "Applause, applause, life is our cause" serves as a credo for Blue, her great 1971 album, which finds her longing to "wreck my stockings in some juke box dive" though rock star revelry seems to be getting to her when she insists "Acid, booze, and ass; needles, guns and grass … everybody’s saying hell’s the hippest way to go: will I don’t think so." Of course it’s obvious from the rest of the album that she’s globe-hopping and having her own share of fun. The series of albums starting with Ladies of the Canyon (1970) and ending with The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975) are compelling as detached displays of the lifestyles of the rich and self-absorbed. It’s aural voyeurism with the rock and roll jet-set. One of my favorite parts of For the Roses occurs on "Electricity" when Joni sketches a story of trying to help a girlfriend with a car problem/love problem: she writes, "the masking tape tangles; it’s sticky and black." Obviously she doesn’t know the difference between masking tape and electrical tape, but, then again, what auto-mechanic could write an extended metaphor as splendid as "Electricity."
With Mitchell you don’t get "hooks" as much as you get perks. As her career moved into the late seventies, even the perks get a little hard to locate. Mitchell’s mid-career was marked by jazz-derived experiments. Heijira and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter didn’t sing so much as they talked (in some parts they even chatter). Freewheeling perhaps, but also wordy and imprecise.
In the eighties, Mitchell’s cloistered pursuit of studio technology has led to coldness and artificiality: too much techno space is put between Joni’s feelings and the actual songs. As her life has become more closed to public scrutiny, the songs have become strained, the albums uneven. Mitchell may feel deeply about the state of the nation, but she isn’t all that convincing ("Lakota," "Cherokee Louise," "Slouching Towards Bethlehem," "The Three Great Stimulants,": "Tax Free," "Ethiopia"). The techno-sheen that accompanies these songs works well enough in the hands of some artists, but, for Mitchell, the music hasn’t the humanistic sonority of her more engaged, early music. She seldom rises above the ideological wall between studio expertise and worldly empathy.
Despite the inconsistency, there are songs scattered about her weaker albums that are as compelling as anything she’s written. These include "The Tea Leaf Prophecy," "Snakes and Ladders," "Reoccurring Dream," "Sweet Sucker Dance," "Furry Sings the Blues," "Black Crow," "Blue Motel Room," "Refuge in the Roads" and "Shade of Scarlet Conquering." The work represents a unique mind free of cant and rhetoric and pop clichés. These songs, like many of her best songs, are among the best written by a sixties singer/songwriter.
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