The Hissing of Summer Lawns: a poll

the eeh-eeh-eeh-eeh multitracked Jonis on "Edith" obv inspired Prince.

Was trying to think of what my least favorite track is and that's almost equally hard, nothing I really don't like.

"Shadows and Light" has that massive Moog and more multitracked Joni but it's portentous and doomy.

So hard to choose but going with Edith. "Small town, big man..."

Edith. Love it.

also - the Steely Dan thing is more than implied. certain that Larry Carlton, Skunk Baxter and maybe one or two other Dan affiliates are on Court and Spark and Hissing...

Love the "Edith" love here, I'd always assumed that track was underrated.

Between that, "Shades...", the title track or "The Boho Dance" for me.

xp yes i knew they shared players, but saying jazz in j.m. wouldn't have happened without the example of steely dan is a little different. but w/e, it's nit-picky

I find this album more insular than anything in the Dan catalog besides Gaucho.

I heard an interview where she was saying that she really hated working with rock bass players; someone suggested she worked with jazz musicians instead, and that's how she moved towards the jazz sound.

Is anyone else a fan of Don't Interrupt The Sorrow?

I like that one, it might be my idk third or fourth favorite track on the record?

Boho Dance is just a song that has meant a lot to me in the last seven years or so of my life as I get older and more adultlike.

Is anyone else a fan of Don't Interrupt The Sorrow?

― funk79,

you're darn right!

went with the title track but love so much on this album

Is anyone else a fan of Don't Interrupt The Sorrow?

― funk79,

you're darn right!

this album is incredibly beautiful. makes me glad there's still new great music to discover.

court and spark is so much jazzier than steely dan at the same point imo. it's true that they both used "jazz" but the dan were writing pop songs with "jazz" chords whereas *to me* joni's writing just naturally progressed to "jazz". in fact, the book hotel california points out that her hiring jazz musicians was a result of being frustrated that none of the folk/rock dudes could play her stuff well enough or properly or w/e

Edith, but tough poll. Joni is like religion around here.

"around here"? like, to your wife?

tough poll because joni is revered in these parts. are you the head of a fiefdom or something

sorry, too harsh. just thought it was a funny thing to say. glad this album gets so much love here.

Oh love love love. Lovey dovey

very difficult choice though my first instinct is "don't interrupt the sorrow"

voted "In France They -*wooahoooahh ooooo ooooahhhoohh*- Kiss on Main Street"

mainly because 0:36 of that song is when I fell in love with the album

Poppy poison. Poppy tourniquet.

mouth...piece.......spit

shades of scarlet conquering, a woman must have everything. what a flow that song has. she really is herself there.

i doubt that steely dan influenced joni in taking the jazz avenue. i don't hear so much jazz in their music, maybe a little fusion here and there but over-all steely dan will always stay a pop band with some funky elements.

they would disagree vehemently I think.

SRSLY who the fuck does an electrified cover of St. Louis Toodle-Ooo but a heavily jazz-influenced band.

*East

anyone up for a Hissing vs. Hejira poll? I can't figure out which one I like more

i doubt that steely dan influenced joni in taking the jazz avenue. i don't hear so much jazz in their music, maybe a little fusion here and there but over-all steely dan will always stay a pop band with some funky elements.

I think Joni's influence is more cosmic bop -- Monk and obv. Mingus -- but Dan is pretty plainly influenced by big band and bop, the 33.3 about them breaks down a lot of their chord stuff - there aren't a lot of pop songs doing stuff like the title track from Aja or the breakdown in "I Got the News," or any of their tremendous horn arrangments

whereas Joni doesn't show a whole lotta interest in horns - they're there sometimes, but they're just supporting the song, as in a normal pop arrangement. whereas the "I Got the News" horns - they're so key to the whole recording that they're as important as the lyric

Went for 'Shades' eventually...truth be told it was never gonna be anything else...can't think of a song that aches so much...absolutely devastating

This is eye-opening. I had assumed that "The Jungle Line" would be by far the consensus favorite here. I don't talk to other Joni fans enough.

I think Joni's influence is more cosmic bop -- Monk and obv. Mingus -- but Dan is pretty plainly influenced by big band and bop, the 33.3 about them breaks down a lot of their chord stuff - there aren't a lot of pop songs doing stuff like the title track from Aja or the breakdown in "I Got the News," or any of their tremendous horn arrangments

― Now I Am Become Dracula (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Saturday, May 31, 2014 7:32 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally, or the chord progression at the beginning of "Deacon Blues" -- it could be the intro to a hard bop tune. Not to mention that the verses sit on 13th chords, or that the chorus sounds like a bossa nova jazz progression. I mean how often do they play a chord that doesn't at least have a 7th in it, let alone a 9th, 11th, 13th, etc.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I mean how often do they play a chord that doesn't at least have a 7th in it, let alone a 9th, 11th, 13th, etc.

my dad plays jazz piano and has straight up told me "always play the 7 or the maj7." straight chords just do not exist for him

Some old jazzers call straight maj/min chords "cowboy chords."

Title track, for so perfectly a lazy, faintly sinister summer's day in 70s LA, but The Jungle Line is obviously incredible too.

And I fell in love with Shades of Scarlet after the ILX Joni poll. The lyrics!

not a fan of this artist, but played this yeasterday and wd have to go w/ The Boho Dance.

Heatwaves on the runway
As the wheels set down
He takes his baggage off the carousel
He takes a taxi into town
Yellow schools of taxi fishes
Jonah in a ticking whale
Caught up at the light in the fishnet windows
Of Bloomingdale's
Watching those high fashion girls
Skinny black models with raven curls
Beauty parlor blondes with credit card eyes
Looking for the chic and the fancy to buy

He opens up his suitcase
In the continental suite
And people thirty stories down
Colored currents in the street
A helicopter lands on the Pan Am roof
Like a dragonfly on a tomb
And business men in button downs
Press into conference rooms
Battalions of paper-minded males
Talking commodities and sales
While at home their paper wives and paper kids
Paper the walls to keep their gut reactions hid

i could've easily voted for any of the first six songs, they're all of them As. probably then i would've voted for sorrow. but i voted for harry. such captivating imagery. amazing.

took me foreverrr to get into this record, in comparison both court and spark and hejira seem open and intelligible, less clustered and walled away. but now i love it, its vibe is so specific, all these deep, ever-shifting character studies, the song structured as dimensionally as the lyrics. this was between "scarlett" and "boho," and i went with "boho" almost arbitrarily

like a priest with a pornographic watch
looking and longing on the sly

it always annoyed me that Bjork covered that song because she seems like pretty much the opposite of its narrator

There can hardly be a better lyric than:

His eyes hold Edith's
His left hand holds his right
What does that hand desire
That he grips it so tight?

A: a wank

synth tone on "shadows and light" so evil

I'm pretty sure Hejira is ur fav Joni record...

Edith is correct as poll-winner, surprised to see seven votes for The Jungle Line, removing that song would make the album better in my challenging opinion

this or court and spark is my favorite Joni record

I love how playful that Moog line is, though.

niels, i agree with you, i can't listen to the jungle line, but the rest of the album is totally classic. i would've voted for "in france," just for the joyousness of the "do you wanna dance" refrain

Reading back over the earlier parts of the thread and it's interesting to see the speculation that Steely Dan inspired Joni to turn to jazz.

I feel like Hissing is the culmination of the approach she started cultivating with For The Roses (and the two records feel very related to me) - if anything a lot of the vocal cadences and song structures of For The Roses feel even more jazz-laced to me, but she doesn't yet have the band to support her direction so it's mostly just built around these ruminative piano pieces or complex guitar phrases. Incidentally FTR was released the same month as Can't Buy A Thrill.

Whereas on Hissing that same approach really flowers with these arrangements that are drenched in ambiguity and wondering. Edith, Shades, the title track and Harry's House in particular are such remarkably beautiful and passionate tracks given they're ultimately third person character sketches in which judgment is either suspended or heavily convoluted.

I think she was certainly aware of Steely Dan and they may well have had some influence, but to say that she was this folkie who heard Steely Dan and went jazz-pop seems like a bit of an ill-informed stretch and may in fact be the opposite of how things worked.

She made For the Roses with Tom Scott among other session players before the first Steely Dan record came out, and while that and the second album may have played a role in pushing her in more of a jazz-pop direction on Court and Spark, that record came out before the Dan went more explicitly jazz-inflected on Pretzel Logic, and its direction was likely simply a consequence of bringing on Scott's band, the LA Express, which had released their debut album within the prior year, and which included Larry Carlton (who not too long after played on Katy Lied and The Royal Scam), and Joe Sample (who subsequently joined him on Aja and Gaucho, the last of which finally roped in Scott himself).

That same band also played on Miles of Aisles and the Hissing of Summer Lawns (which did rope in Victor Feldman from Dan-land, but featured Chuck Findley before he played on The Royal Scam, et al) and absent a reason to challenge her statement, Mingus approached Joni rather than vice versa, presumably after noting her work with Jaco and other Weather Reporters on Hejira (a year before Aja came out) and Don Juan's Reckless Daughter.

re: "oh but hejira is your actual favorite joni record" sure, ok, yes, hejira's accomplishments can't be overstated, it's probably her most comprehensive lyrical achievement, it sounds like no other record, a complete world of its own made up less of chordal progressions than desert shimmers. hissing resembles several records but that's ok imo bc it's the most distant and almost... orchestrated version of all the fusiony jazz-pop records it shares superficial qualities with (the motifs in "shades of scarlett conquering" and especially the "darkness!" choral vocal in the title track feel so symphonic to me), a storyteller observing her characters with an eye that isn't detached or unsympathetic but still doesn't interfere emotionally with what's already happening, allowing the scene to develop almost of its own accord. i hear the word "honesty" associated with joni's work a lot and i think this is really the form of honesty she deals in, a kind of pop flannery o'connor, characters so completely realized that their feelings power them toward their fates. also idk, as soon as i hear the drums in "in france they kiss on main street" i'm completely mesmerized, what a fucking record

tl;dr even though hejira is her most realized record-as-soundworld the in-betweenness of hissing is what draws me to it

This is my favorite too. “Oh well, just another hard time band with negro affectations” = such a great line that you could never get away with now, although I don’t *think* she meant anything problematic by it (if anything she’s calling out the white dudes)

I'm pretty sure Hejira is ur fav Joni record...

Edith is correct as poll-winner, surprised to see seven votes for The Jungle Line, removing that song would make the album better in my challenging opinion

― niels

it's not on the demos record, which was how i got into the record. the demos also has "dreamland" and less skunk baxter.

I am looking that demos record up now, remember the Edith demo from Tyler's rarities piece, was great

I guess it's not the first time the Joni/SD comparison has been brought up here Literate Jazz-Pop TS: Steely Dan vs. Joni Mitchell 1974-1980

There is a sense of freedom in Joni's work, in her phrasing and the melodies she writes, which is absent in SD, which is obv very very controlled, a different kind of jazz. I think the only other artist that I am familiar with who explored similar territory is Van Morrison.

oh yeah and Brad otm btw, was just teasing, Hissing is probably the Joni record I've spent most time with in the past few years, probably her best album title

a storyteller observing her characters with an eye that isn't detached or unsympathetic but still doesn't interfere emotionally with what's already happening, allowing the scene to develop almost of its own accord. i hear the word "honesty" associated with joni's work a lot and i think this is really the form of honesty she deals in, a kind of pop flannery o'connor, characters so completely realized that their feelings power them toward their fates.

Booming post.

The Jungle Line is the eye-of-the-duck of the album. Makes me think of African Nite Flight off of Bowie's Lodger.

One of my favourite ephemeral moments on this album is the opening phrase 'He bought her a diamond for her throat' - it's the phrasing on that last little 'for-her-throat', sounds like a flute line, like something Mancini would have played or something.

yes - incredible delivery on that line

Never gave this one any time and now...now I'm in love.

but...will she love you?

I will take my chances.

I'd have picked "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow" or maybe "Sweet Bird". I'm surprised to see all the admiration for "The Boho Dance", it always struck me as unremarkable.

I love the balls out confidence to place ‘The Jungle Line’ as the second track on this album...it’s such a jarring jumpcut it really disturbed me for such a long time, but now see it as someone so in control of their artistic vision...breathtaking...consequently I have a penchant for weird/off kilter second tracks

I think it's her best album. Everything is lockdown inflected now but I listened to this in what feels like the briefest of window of being able to listen to music in public spaces and it utterly transformed me and the dull urban space I was occupying at the time.

"The Jungle Line" was the song that got me into Joni Mitchell. I was into Bow Wow Wow at the time and I immediately recognized the "Jungle Line" beat as a Bow Wow Wow beat played at half tempo.

I agree that it's hard to imagine these ten songs in any other order.

today is the day this album really clicked for me. thanks, thread!

It’s funny: this record’s sonic influence is strikingly all over Kate Bush’s “Never For Ever” but I’ve never read a KB interview where she gives Joni M more than a passing acknowledgment.