The Joni Mitchell - Best Album POLL

*To, not for

I think the sentiment expressed on that song (my man is good) is just somewhat simpler than the more complex emotions that the rest of the album conveys.

To me, the bridge ("But when he's gone ... ") seems to temper the feelgood vibes and implies that, as great as he is when he's around, he has a tendency to stray. Which makes the lyric bittersweet.

when i was listening to blue the other day i marveled a little at the line "the bed's too big, the frying pan's too wide"

just a really evocative way of portraying domestic absence amid domestic bliss

her lyrical development on every record after blue is exponential but there's also a world of richness in the relative simplicity and specificity of blue, lines jump out at you even after years of listening and reveal they have worlds inside of them

i was going to make this point earlier but blue and court and spark feel to me like they're looking at each other from the opposite sides of the same river, like they both seem to say you can have complexity and intricacy and still have it come out as pop, as these compressed gems of narrative and inwardly searching chords refracting from a thousand angles; for the roses, and then hissing and hejira seem to stray from this deliberately, trying to assemble scenes with their own language and staying true to it. a lot of value in both approaches

can't tell if these observations are facile or not, just having a good day thinking about joni

facile

Nah, it's good stuff.

was going to make this point earlier but blue and court and spark feel to me like they're looking at each other from the opposite sides of the same river

from both sides now?

*skates away*

btw how do you musicians rate Joni as a pianist? I never see her rated yet she plays it as much as she does guitar.

I'm listening to "Let the Wind Carry Me" and am in love again with her runs.

Oh she’s excellent, not especially gifted technically but continuously inventive. Considering how reliant she is, creatively, on lots-of-tunings in her guitar writing, it is lovely to hear that her piano writing is just-as-inventive

I spent a day over Christmas sight-reading piano transcriptions of her songs, and developed an renewed appreciation for her skill on that instrument

i've only listened to dog eat dog a couple of times but "the three great stimulants" came on in a mix i was listening to (this one specifically https://www.nts.live/shows/bumpin-on-sunset/episodes/bumpin-on-sunset-8th-august-2019) the other night and wheeewwwwwwwww it gave me chills, a song full of open space but i still found it hard to breath easily until all its tension is released when joni sings "oh these times, oh these changing times"

Yeah, I get why that album is maligned in the context of Joni's catalogue but I adore it-- so much more than Turbulent Indigo and Taming The Tiger

Sorry to toot a horn but I love that Mingus-to-Night Ride Home period so much and Joni is impossible to cover but nevertheless I am proud of this hxxps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SS-Ive-mkJE

Oh wow, great cover. Makes me want to dig out my copy of Night Ride Home before bedtime.

that is a great cover, indeed. somehow i had forgotten about the magic of that song. all her albums after "wild things run fast" i found really disappointing when they came out. though "night ride home" was a huge improvement on "dog eat dog" and "chalk mark in a rainstorm".

can't tell if these observations are facile or not, just having a good day thinking about joni

― american bradass (BradNelson), Thursday, August 15, 2019 6:09 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

qft

I find Chalk Mark In A Rainbow quite interesting to think about. You can hear Joni straining toward the sound she mastered on Night Ride Home but not getting there. Even more than Dog Eat Dog, Chalk Mark feels defined by its 80s production values, but I don’t think the problem is the production per se; rather it’s that Joni doesn’t really have a strong grasp on how to structure her songwriting around three arrangements, so the vocal lines feel unmoored, never quite building to anything satisfying.

Whereas Night Ride Home is about momentum: even more than Hejira, its songs thrive on their endless repetition, the swapping out of specific lyrical detail from verse to verse underscoring the reiteration of the same melodic and narrative themes.

But it’s very small distance from say “Snakes and Ladders” in Chalk Mark (a tune I quite like but which never quite rises above being a tribute to Peter Gabriel’s So) to “Nothing Can Be Done”, Night Ride Home’s most eighties-sounding track but also a supremely hypnotic and entrancing song (pro tip: put it on a mix with The Commodores’ “Night Shift”).

One of my favourite bits of random trivia is that Janet Jackson is obsessed with the rather middling Chalk Mark track “The Beat of Black Wings” and has even covered it.

Tim, the Gabriel collaboration "My Secret Place" is to me the aural John the Baptist for the Night Ride Home-Turbulent Indigo sound: singing slightly behind the melody, the squiggles of sax/guitar, the keyboard patches, the seductive modesty of the recording.

Yes, “My Secret Place” definitely feels like a precursor to songs like “Cherokee Louise”: effectively all the stylistic elements are in place; though again, it feels like it relies on its arrangement structure to give it purpose (and once you look past that: what exactly is the anecdote about watching a film in NYC that was shot in Colorado supposed to be about or for).

Whereas on Night Ride Home, almost everything feels purposive regardless of how tight or loose the song structure. So on “Cherokee Louise” when the first verse (“Cherokee Louise is hiding in this tunnel in the Broadway Bridge”) is partially repeated in the second verse but this time replacing the innocuous detail “We’ve got cold cuts from the fridge” with the admission “...I know where she is”, the effect is chilling.

Of her entire catalogue, only this album and Hejira and Hissing of Summer Lawns so completely inhabit this lyrical style of endlessly accreting detail that, rather than dilute the impact of any particular phrase, deepens their portent, makes everything feel dangerously loaded with meaning and resonance.

then there's this beauty:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXn9TH5TdlQ

Oh yes but “Two Grey Rooms” is so good and unique that it doesn’t seem fair to place it in any sort of comparative context.

Except perhaps to say that it is to middle age what “The Last Time I Saw Richard” is to turning 30.

Just heard a great interview with Thomas Dolby where he expounds on the ‘Dog Eat Dog’ debacle.

He says she was totally unfocused and wouldn’t let him construct his Dolbyesque vision he had for the album (vis a vis the “I don’t need an interior decorator for my album” quote).

She also became cruel and vindictive when he asked for a writing credit on one of the songs and also said the record company had foisted him on her.

I actually came out of it feeling a huge sympathy for Dolby, sounds like she psychically damaged him which is a shame because I think it could have been a great album. ( I actually still think it’s very very underrated record ).

I love this thread

XP - could you link to that, interested!

Pt 1

https://open.spotify.com/episode/08telglUDX0FYbnQHIqqG4?si=FntW_lHxT5q9a-41vaWdtw

Pt 2

https://open.spotify.com/episode/7DeBaUVU1E0hWtuZUhI3Rm?si=6Vys8f_JQ2atwLrWvTLMUA

The Joni Mitchell section is part 2

Thank you!

Well. There goes my morning.

In David Yaffe's bio, Mitchell's quite clear that she and Klein hired Dolby to act as a glorified engineer (which is what producers are, no?).

wouldn’t let him construct his Dolbyesque vision he had for the album

It's also that he feels she didn't understand what recording a state-of-the-1985-art record would entail. Dolby would prepare a keyboard sound for a minor overdub which she would then decide would become the main keyboard part of the song, which would involve him changing other elements that had already been recorded. It wasn't like sitting down at the piano and just playing the song.

she and Klein hired Dolby to act as a glorified engineer

There was definitely miscommunication about his role between the two parties. In a contemporary interview she suggested that he was trying to be "creative" when his purpose there was "technical".

I think nowadays producers often are expected to shape the sound somewhat, sometimes to the extent of playing the studio as an instrument, like Eno.

An engineer is more of an assistant that helps the producer or musician capture their sounds, like Albini.

There's a series about Joni on BBC R4 at the moment, presented by Jesca Hoop. It's listenable enough but of the four I've heard so far (up to Don J's RD) they all end with her retreating from the limelight after anjoying popular success, scarred by fame, an artist at the crossroads...

I feel ancient these days, so toss one more vote in for Both Sides Now.

Court and Spark for me.

Me too, that one is a high water mark.

Really enjoyed the Court and Spark Demos album that came out on Record Store Day.

(Hejira is my real vote)

Dolby maintains that she knew exactly what he’d been hired for and was a big fan of his productions. He thinks she was trying to sideline him and give the producer role to Larry Klein. Not sure how true that was and Dolby didn’t exactly endear himself ( he doesn’t sound like a yes man) but sounds as though he was treated pretty shoddily.

Although lines can become blurred Producer and Engineer are two distinct roles. I’m sure Thomas Dolby is adept at working a desk and outboard equipment, the late great Mike Shipley definitely was the engineer and recorded the project. Some producers would not have a clue how to work any of the equipment in a studio.

That's true. I can't imagine Jimmy Iovine dirtying his hands.

As it so happens I seem to recall Jimmy Iovine did have a background in engineering. Rick Rubin, Gary Katz and Arif Mardin a three who come to mind who did not.

I figure folks like Iovine are really good “project managers” and music biz schmoozers who know all the right technical ppl, musicians to hire? And keep things “on track” or whatever

But it’s funny when you read about Kreator or The Eagles hating their relatively clean cut by-the-book producers and getting along better when they switched to producers as rowdy as themselves

Get over it!

To be fair to Jimmy Iovine he definitely took the teaboy/ assistant engineer-Engineer-Producer path and ascended it pretty quickly but there are plenty of producers who lucked out probably because they’re a ‘good hang’. Never been entirely sure what Rick Rubin does exactly but probably just me…

I think he produced "Reign In Blood" and some hip-hop in the 80s, iirc

Yeah but he doesn’t come from an engineering or musician background…he admitted it in an interview

:) I was being cheeky

I bristled last year when there was a media blip about that Rubin interview, whereby people were claiming he was some kind of a fraud. (If only people know what role movie producers play in the creation of films, people who are basically organizers and bookkeepers and bankrollers more than directors/actors/writers/editors!)

The fact too that Eno got sideswiped by some commentators as if the only thing he does in studio is sit in a corner with his box of cards; ridiculous!

Rubin may be known, at his most detached, for being “the producer who doesn’t even come into the studio, just stays home getting blazed and listens to the day’s mixes on MP3s through stock Mac headphones and replies ‘yes’ or ‘no’,” but he does do much more than that; at the very least, he owns a fantastic studio filled with fantastic gear and staffed by fantastic techs. (I haven’t worked with him, though I’ve met him, and immediately wanted to spend all my days in the same room with him; I have worked at his studio with his gear and his techs and it was “all that”, as promised.)

It’s true that there is little-to-no comparison between a Rubin and, say, a Rundgren (or a Timbaland or an Antonoff) but that doesn’t mean his production style is illegitimate or fraudulent imo

yeah Eno's almost always played instruments with his clients.