The Joni Mitchell - Best Album POLL

Thanks to steep discounts on Record Store Day, I got a promo mint condition copy of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter yesterday. I've accepted the received wisdom that this thing is an outlier in Mitchell's oeuvre but a few tracks sound like Hejira outtakes only this time Pastorious is mixed too high or his playing is too busy.

I'd love some commentary as I absorb this thing.

Cotton Avenue and Paprika Plains are all time, really. It's interesting, but not a failing that the bass is the second most prominent instrument after Joni's voice, there are also sections where ether are two basslines.

a promo mint condition copy of Don Juan's Reckless Daughter

For some reason this makes me smile. Isn't DJRD one of the most available second-hand records out there? Not disparaging the purchase, just amused, i.e. "I found a promo mint copy of The Final Cut"

agreed with poxen, those things are all over the place! Still nice to find an unplayed copy though.

Its immaculate condition – I doubt it'd been played once – is telling.

"Paprika Plains" has revealed its secrets to me.

SPOILER ALERT

after another long session with night ride home i decided to listen to her '80s records for the first time. wild things run fast feels slight but could also grow deeper the more i listen to it. dog eat dog, though! this is great! i love all of these synth textures

I suppose I should finally listen to Dog Eat Dog

I bought DED on cassette for $3 at a Best Buy in the summer of '98. "Fiction" is my favorite of the didactic songs, and the single "Good Friends" folds the Thomas Dolby filigrees into a fraught, shimmering minor classic. "Impossible Dreamer" isn't bad. The rest is failed experimentation. You can also hear her voice beginning to change.

how do you feel about chalk mark in a rain storm alfred? was going to listen to that one today

too many guests, not enough songs.

NRH is where she realizes that sound.

listening to it now i can definitely see that. still enjoying the explicitly '80s touches. dog eat dog in retrospect is a pretty big outlier in her catalogue

"lakota" is both embarrassing and gorgeous

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha "dancin' clown"

Night Ride Home is so good it's not possible. I feel like i'll even need to listen to Shine at some point on the off chance it's an unrecognised minor classic.

yeah night ride home kills me. been listening to it around 1 am every night for the past week and it goes so many places without moving very much at all

meanwhile clear standout of chalk mark is "the beat of black wings" which is fucking unbelievable

also janet jackson's favourite song

I like the Peter Gabriel duet.

My friend Inskeep wrote this for Stylus years ago:

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/on_second_thought/joni-mitchell-chalk-mark-in-a-rain-storm.htm

Interesting take but he makes it sound as if Joni went straight from folkie to overproduced aging boomer

her politics are pretty simpleminded on those late records; she's casting aspersions all over the place. it's tiresome, even when the music is occasionally seductive. although it's pretty obvious her melodic facility nearly dried up some time around 1979.

Thanks to Tim F and John D's efforts, I've come round to the entirety of Night Ride Home, one of my favorite autumnal releases.

Yeah, Night Ride Home is a wonderful record.

So the whole time I've been in New York I've had "Song For Sharon" in my head on and off (though haven't actually listened to it). Only Joni could so deeply and indelibly imprint herself in my brain that I can be standing on a subway platform and suddenly think, "A woman I knew just drowned herself / the well was deep and muddy / she was just shaking off futility / or punishing somebody / my friends were calling up all day yesterday / all emotions and abstraction / it seems we all live so close to that line, and / so far from satisfaction..."

i had "free man in paris" in my head all day today

although it's pretty obvious her melodic facility nearly dried up some time around 1979.

given that some of the best melodies she ever wrote are on night ride home, lol

"come in from the cold" is so good

One of her best ever.

whole album is fantastic except for "Ray's Dad's Cadillac"

I've always found the lyrics to "The Windfall" a bit off-putting.

I don't know the details of the lawsuit, and that might help me enjoy the song

nahhhh "ray's dad's cadillac" is great too! love the brassy chord stabs that respond to the refrain.

I do like the overall vibe of the verses. I just hate the refrain so much. Focusing on the brass does help, though, so I appreciate the tip.

"stokin' the star makin' machinery behind the popular song" is just a beautiful turn of phrase

Seeing the love that "Come in From the Cold" is getting here is heartwarming.

I don't know if there are even that many songs about looking back on yr life from the vantage point of middle age anyway, but I can't think of one better, or with such a sense of sweep to it.

I love how the synthesizer responsible for the billowing sound effects is called the Billotron.

For the Roses holy hell

jason mantzoukas is not really my thing. But he recently revelealed that he listened to Hejira every night for 10 years or something, and it's enough to make me feel something for the guy.

Eh revealed obv

I found this pretty tasteless, given that afaik Joni is still alive, but by all accounts will very likely be part of next year's montage, which I believe operates as the morbid implication here

do they only sing songs for that montage from dead musicians? i personally wouldn't read too much into it. idk.

I'm probably just sensitive because I really want Joni to live forever. But no, I don't think they specifically typically use a song by a dead musician, but when I saw the headline, it made me think Joni'd died and I hadn't heard about it. And the elephant in the room is, you know, she's been very ill...

"The Silky Veils of Ardor" is killin' me tonight.

I came across this podcast a couple weeks ago when Lilly Hiatt did an episode, and now I've been going through the backlog listening to older ones.

John Oates spoke so glowingly about Blue that I'm almost at the point where I'm ready to commit to making myself like Joni Mitchell. Even if I never do, it was a joy to hear him talk this way about an artist and album he so clearly loves.
http://mrjeremydylan.com/post/151644261850/my-favorite-album-165-john-oates-on-joni

Also, Wimmels man, chill out. Both Sides Now is such a fixture in pop culture that it hardly even registers as a Joni song anymore. It's just a song everybody knows.

DOG EAT DOG is her best album fite me.

court and spark is my favourite, weird it only got 4 votes

which that outro to help me would just loop forever

c&s is my favorite too

court and spark
hissing of summer lawns
don juan's reckless daughter / hejira
blue
for the roses

the others ive listened to quite a lot but they don't feel familiar enough to me to rank

court and spark should have stormed this. Night Ride Home is underrated, if only because of

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1j0j4r_gnw