The Joni Mitchell - Best Album POLL

Clouds through Court & Spark is as perfect an album run as any artist ever IMHO.

blue vs hissing vs hejira, leaning towards hissing

For me it's Court and Spark vs. Hissing. Voted the former but will probably regret it.

blue vs hissing vs hejira, leaning towards hissing
^^^basically the same for me, except I'm leaning towards Hejira

Ladies of the Canyon seems pretty underrated on ILM but it's my favorite. I could do without the old songs at the end but e.g. "Rainy Night House" is heavenly.

head says hejira heart says blue

yeah "rainy night house" is completely beautiful - could do with going back in time and completely erasing "big yellow taxi" and "woodstock" from having ever existed though

xp

"Hissing...", just ahead of "Hejira" and "Court And Spark". Those three are largely in a league of their own.

High five, Geir!

"The Circle Game" is pretty weak too; I love how on Miles of Aisles she goofs on it, saying how it was written to be sung out-of-tune.
xxp

Court and Spark or Hejira, but someone should defend a couple of the late eighties/late nineties records. I always thought she had a way with keyboard technology. Dog Eat Dog has a couple of angry synth poppers, and Night Ride Home has a lovely airy sound.

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. Oh, I know - Blue, Hissing, Hejira, blah blah blah. All indispensable. But whether it's 'Talk To Me,' where she just doesn't shut up even when she pissed a tequila anaconda the full length of the parking lot, or 'Off Night Back Street,' where she wonders grimly, who left her long black hairs in our bathtub drain, this album creates a whole, autumnal world that is always entertaining and great. I do get sleepy during 'Paprika Plains,' but you're supposed to. Also, I successfully shoplifted this album in 1978 at a Hess's department store, which adds sentimental value. I went back minutes later and got caught with 'Parallel Lines' by Blondie and Handel's Messiah. It cured me from a life of this type of crime. I later bought all of Joni's old albums on CD, but I finally felt that my penance and restitution was complete when I paid full price at Starbuck's for the abomination 'Shine.'

Hejira

I could make a case for Hejira or Court & Spark & will even rep pretty hard for Night Ride Home but Blue straight-up changed my life. There may not be any record in the world to which I feel a stronger emotional connection.

Don Juan's for me, no objectivity here just love

"In my dweems we fwy"

i ended up voting for blue and predict a massive "silent majority" effect in these poll results

For what -- Wild Things Run Fast?

Dubya had her cover of "You're So Square" on his iPod a few years ago.

Court & Spark

blue, hejira or mingus for me. three different stages of a woman. i haven't decided yet. actuallky i don'tb think there is a best. but everything after wild things run fast was sub par.

kind of surprised she's done as many albums after mingus as before. even if it took three times as long.

mingus is odd, touching, underrated, i think bcz of how understated it is as memorial and testimony

the stuff around hejira, with the sort of variable-length wobbly-melodied lines, seems way better than anything else to me. that sort of structure stopped her from falling into hippie truism, which when she does such i loathe it

i still don't know about how i feel about jaco pastorius tho

don't get M@tt started on Jaco IIRC

I'm struggling here with why anyone would vote for anything other than Blue.

don't get M@tt started on Jaco IIRC

― Man Is Nairf! (J0hn D.), Friday, September 4, 2009 10:55 PM (24 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol seriously i am a total asshole about jaco, believe j0hn

c'mon don't tell me no one is gonna vote for Hejira

hissing for me. saw an otherwise excellent doco on her a little while back and this album wasn't even mentioned :-(

C&S

My vote and my top 3 are the same as Geir's. Maybe Blue and Dog Eat Dog round out the top 5 for me.

For The Roses has crept back up in my estimation. Now it's equal with Hissing and Blue behind Hejira which is always and 4 ever my fave.

Spent many many hours listening to Blue and Court & Spark way back when. The voice, music and the half-tone slightly mysterious photos of Joni on those 2 albums - that was an awesome combo when I was 14 or so. Voted Blue, that was the first one.

xposts:"ended up voting for blue and predict a massive "silent majority" effect in these poll results"
"I'm struggling here with why anyone would vote for anything other than Blue"

"Spent many many hours listening to Blue and Court & Spark way back when. The voice, music and the half-tone slightly mysterious photos of Joni on those 2 albums - that was an awesome combo when I was 14 or so. Voted Blue, that was the first one."

agreeeed! in addition to Blue and Court and Spark, For the Roses always hit close to home, and either could be the top pick on any given day. Hejira then Hissing... round out me pee-oh-vee.

Feel like a total asshole for voting Miles of Aisles but there is no better combination of her songs on record!!! Don't hate me ILM, esp. if you include RAD live albums on career retrospective polls!!!

nah, Miles of Aisles is great, esp. the full-band songs.

I love Joni more than most music geeks, but I can't really pretend any other album comes close to 'Blue,' for me.

Yeah, see, I love Blue -- my first Joni, etc -- but I don't play it as much as C&S, Hissing of Summer Lawns, or Hejira.

Blue is really a very time/place/emotion specific record. It's really hard to listen to large parts of it if I'm in a very specific frame of mind (generally full-blown depression, anxiety, etc). C&S can really come on at any time, though.

Unless I'm in a very...*

I love Blue but I don't really get its mystique as this depressive mopefest of an album. A good half of it seems fairly upbeat to me.

Summer Lawns, easy. Weirdly, I have the exact same top 3 as Geir. Thought I could rely on him to complain about The Jungle Line being "insufficently melodic".

"Hejira" although really there's a few of these records that are so good that rating one over another is kind of pointless.

Blue because it touches my very soul and I know that sounds totally corny.

m@tt, please tell me how you feel about the playing of jaco pastorius purely on joni's mid-period work. including his solo spots on shadows + light tour if you wish:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOqR84PtctA

jaco shreds

had to double check it wasn't an StS vid..............

Yeah, see, I love Blue -- my first Joni, etc -- but I don't play it as much as C&S, Hissing of Summer Lawns, or Hejira.

Exactly.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

pffffffff

I don't understand why Ladies & Court are so low. :(

That is the right answer.

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.

I may have related this story before, because it’s one of my favourites, but, Laurie Anderson on Eno, paraphrased from memory:

“We only worked together once, I believe, but it was a memorable experience. Eno was at the board, and we were recording. Suddenly one of the channels started acting up. Eno got so excited, like, “ooooh! A PROBLEM!” That something like a channel failing would not compromise the recording experience, but rather enrich it.”

whereby people were claiming he was some kind of a fraud

still inexhaustibly making that claim wherever & whenever his name arises

if I die and you want to talk to me after just stand over my grave and praise Rick Rubin, I'll be right up

rubin's also gone out of his way to cultivate this red hot chili peppers yoda ~vibe sherpa~ bullshit, like claiming on 60 minutes he doesn't know how to operate a board which is verifiably false

https://povmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Tom_Petty-scaled.jpg

i mostly hate the fact that he's this modern day buddha when in actuality during the 80s he was a coked up little shit, as kate schellenbach attested to in the beastie boys book

Maybe he "he doesn't know how to operate a board" the way Eno claims he "doesn't play an instrument" - he's a talented amateur rather than a technician.

Sorry I sidetracked the thread…The Thomas Dolby interview is great though

Wish that Dolby interview was available somewhere other than Spotify. I ain't goin' there.

his autobio (The Speed Of Sound) has all the details, his summary is "despite all that, I cannot fault Joni"

-TD otm

Inspired by this thread I have been going back thru Joni's 80s and 90s work, Night Ride Home towers over the 80s stuff, but I had not stopped to appreciate how much "Passion Play" is a direct reworking of "Hejira", even down to the arrangement, and of course riffs on a lyric from "Coyote". Has she ever talked about the decision to revisit that song?

also - great cover fgti, nailed it

omg you saw that? Thank you. Honestly my fave Joni song after “…Richard”

Yeah I love fgti's version too.

This thread always makes me return to Dog Eat Dog to try to engage with it more/better, but I always founder. I discussed this some time ago upthread, but it's not the production that I have an issue with (in fact I really like the production), but the approach to songwriting. The songs feel fragmented, a series of disconnected vamps assembled at almost random - this sounds like an interesting quality in theory, but it leans hard away from one of Joni's key strengths as a songwriter, which is how she can use the connective tissue within her songs to build intensity and momentum, whereas these songs don't have much in the way of connective tissue (maybe one reason for the heavy-handed subject matter is to provide a narrative through line to make up for the arrangements and performances).

Using "Passion Play" as a counterexample, the first half of the song is structured very repetitively melodically, so that when she first introduces the variation on the chorus ("Oh, enter the multitudes / the walking wounded / they come to this diver of the heart of the multitudes") it's like a sudden deepening and intensification of what was already there, even though the shift is quite subtle.

And - a quality Night Ride Home shares with Hejira - because of the sheer density of her lyrics, each iteration of a verse melody needs to be slightly different to accommodate the syllables and phrasing, the stresses falling on different words and notes in order to tell the story effectively.

Both albums capture this very evocative sense of changing same.

"Fiction" strikes me as the DED song whose arrangement matches the synths.

Yes definitely has the Dolby touch…’Shiny Toys’ and ‘Lucky Girl’ also both have an unmistakable Dolby vibe…hadn’t listened to DED in years but surprised by how well it stands up…possibly my fave of her 80’s output

because of the sheer density of her lyrics, each iteration of a verse melody _needs_ to be slightly different to accommodate the syllables and phrasing, the stresses falling on different words and notes