Hejira, Joni Mtchell

It's Women Week!

Hejira, Joni Mitchell, 1976, :52

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

A very personal album, this is.  A journey, a the title says.  Mitchell's lyrics are both inscrutable and yet nakedly revealing, like Dylan's.  The jazzy intertwine of the guitar and bass form the white lines of the highway.  At times the vocals are ghostly and atmospheric.  I wouldn't put this on an all-time greatest albums list; to me, it drags a little in some places.  But it's a beautiful, impressive album.  Favorite tracks: "Coyote" (a masterpiece), the eight-minute "Song For Sharon," "Refuge of the Roads."

Ladies of the Canyon, Joni Mitchell

Continuing the alphabet of albums, L is for lush vocals. 

Ladies of the Canyon, Joni Mitchell, 1970, :44

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Beautiful soaring jazzy pop-folk, with Mitchell's vocals the star of the show.  Her voice soars and trills, gets raspy and back to luscious again.  Her songwriting is no slouch, either.  Dylanesque lines like "He stood looking through the lace / At the face on the conquered moon" kept popping up to delight and bemuse me.  Clarinet and horns complement her piano to create that ephemeral, jazzy sound that was thought then to be "experimental."  Favorite tracks: "Circle Game," "Big Yellow Taxi," "Morning Morgantown."

Blue, Joni Mitchell

Blue, Joni Mitchell, 1971, :36

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

With introspective lyrics, complex melodies, and a swooping, lilting, pure voice, Mitchell sings the trials and tribulations of women who love the wrong men in a world that talks a good game of free love but fails to deliver.  She meets an old lover in a bar and he picks songs on a jukebox.  "Now you're romanticizing some pain that's in your head / You got tombs in your eyes, but the songs you punched are / Dreaming, listen, they sing of love so sweet." Dang.  But that voice easily swoops from Dylanesque contempt and vitriol to an easy free come on. Who else might unironically sing "I want to shampoo you"?  This album contains multitudes. Favorite tracks: "Carey," "River," "A Case of You."