The Joni Mitchell - Best Album POLL

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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