What does it sound like?:
This latest instalment of Joni Mitchell’s beautifully curated Archives series covers her “jazz” period when she made Hejira, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, Mingus and the live album Shadows And Light. As usual, there is a beautifully illustrated book, an explanatory interview with Cameron Crowe and individual covers for each jewel case. None of the music appears on the released albums and is presented in chronological order.
Joni Mitchell, alone, in front of a microphone, spinning her eloquent yarns, her fingers spellbinding the guitar strings around her vocals, sounds so at ease, so natural. The words and melodies emerge fully formed, poetic, personal and profound, and the flow of the guitar lines are constantly questing, yearning, moving forward. It appears that all she had to do, in a studio or on a stage, was to stand up and open her mouth. Joni’s Archives box sets demonstrate time and time again, that thought, word and music were aligned from the very beginning. This Volume of six CDs is seven hours long. You may think you are being short changed by five of them being live, especially when you consider that she did not tour for three of these four years. However, she used every opportunity to develop her songs, unafraid of presenting something new to her audience. Her demos are fully formed, her vocals perfect and her playing on point. It did not matter where she was when the tapes were rolling, they were bound to capture magic.
Take the 4th December 1975 at the Montreal Forum on disc one. The audience is not her audience but Bob Dylan’s. Nevertheless, they are ecstatic that she bothered to show up to open the Rolling Thunder Revue, a star of her stature at the bottom of the bill. She introduces a new, unfinished song, speaking in prose as perfectly constructed as her lyrics. She tells us that she added a fourth verse last night. Without hesitation, as cool as you like, she delivers the most sensual and mesmeric Coyote you will ever hear. It is a stunning performance, the audience hushed in awe, as if listening to someone revealing their innermost secrets. It is just one of many so many blissful moments with five more discs to go.
Her participation in Rolling Thunder, which opens this box, was a watershed, her last flirtation with a male-orientated Rock tour. She joined it shortly after releasing her own betrayal in the view of many of her own fans, The Hissing Of Summer Lawns, and embraced the hedonism wholeheartedly, asking to be paid in cocaine. It gave her plenty ideas for songs, opened a conversation with Dylan that continued through their music, and helped her to clarify her way forward. She had already loosened her relationship with standard song structure and rhythm, but once she recovered from the tour’s excesses, she broke free completely and allowed her artistic imagination to roam as it pleased, seeking her own truth in her own way.
Disc two consists of recordings made from her ill-fated tour in early 1976 with the LA Express. It lasted just over four weeks and collapsed in acrimony, bringing to an end her engagement with drummer, and Jazz Policeman, Jim Guerin. It’s easy to hear, in hindsight, a tension in the band tracks but there is a muted despair in her solo spots that you don’t normally hear when Joni performs live, the colour draining from her aural paintings, bringing out a stark beauty in The Hissing Of Summer Lawns songs, such as Edith And The Kingpin and Harry’s House/Centrepiece. She pitches new songs, longing to be back on the road they were composed on. Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter is presented as an addendum to Coyote. Talk To Me, addressed to Dylan, is already complete in its vulnerable, chicken-squawking fury. It would be nearly two years before both songs were released in studio versions.
The Hejira demos, including three Don Juan songs, are as wonderful as all Joni fans hoped for. Here she is, in a studio, alone with a microphone, reaffirming her lust for life, though Black Crow has some interesting backing vocals from Chaka Khan, no less. Jaco Pastorius’s jazzy, bohemian charms are difficult to resist, but without his bass to distract us, these performances are more intimate and personal, bringing their wit and wisdom into sharper relief. It is hardly a surprise that songs about a woman alone sound perfect when performed by a woman alone. CD 3, by itself, is worth the entry fee for the whole box. It is a Black Friday Record Store Day single LP release, if you get in early.
Once the Mingus project begins, the emphasis is on her collaborations with a new set of musicians, all of them steeped in Jazz. There is a welcome surprise, a recording of her appearance at the Bread & Rose benefit festival September 1978, a time when Mingus was still alive, where she delivers a playful, a capella The Dry Cleaner Of Des Moines, encourages the crowd to provide wolf noises and is joined by none other than Herbie Hancock for adventurous versions of A Chair In The Sky and Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. Her vocals on the latter two are properly jazzed up. Through the experimental New York recordings, the Bread & Rose performances and the early takes with Pastorius, Joni chisels away at Charlie’s melodies, sculpting them in her own image. The first set of musicians make them swing, just a little, but a definite swing. Their God Must Be A Boogie Man is outstanding. The live versions with Hancock are the most emotional. A Good Suit And A Good Haircut brings Mingus’s ‘raps’ together over a nice bit of jazz scatting. Joni’s vocal work on all of these Mingus alternatives is absolutely exquisite. It seems that, over many years, the rich beauty of these songs has deepened.
The last two discs are dominated by the 1979 tour. There’s a nice little warm-up of Big Yellow Taxi and a rehearsal of Jericho and Help Me to get in the mood, and then a full, concert from 25th August 1979 at Forest Hills, New York. It starts at a fast pace, Joni’s voice tensing up on the high notes. However, three solo pieces are in close proximity, Jaco’s, Pat’s and Don’s, allowing Joni to pause for breath, recalibrating her vocal chords. The band, probably the finest she ever brought together, really go to town on The Dry Cleaner Of Des Moines, loosening up their fingers, and the quality steps up for the second half. By the time the tour reaches Santa Barbara, they are all much more relaxed for the recording of the Shadows And Light album.
There is so much to cherish in this box. You may be drawn by the Rolling Thunder recordings or the experimental Mingus tracks, but you will be enthralled by the Hejira/Don Juan demos, the Bread & Roses festival and a dynamic Shadows And Light gig, not forgetting a visit to Gordon Lightfoot’s house to sing Woman Of Heart And Mind, a different perspective of the Hissing Lawns tour, and the penultimate track, a world weary Woodstock, performed in the style of Hejira, just Joni at a microphone. It grieves for the loss of innocence and reflects how far she’d travelled over the decade since she first sang it when she was blissed out with hope. It’s a fitting conclusion to her imperial phase. If the sixties belonged to Bob Dylan and The Beatles, the eighties to Madonna and Prince, then the seventies were bossed by David Bowie and Joni Mitchell.
What does it all *mean*?
Joni Mitchell is one of the most important and influential cultural figures of the 20th Century. Archives Volume Four pulls back the curtain from her late seventies work and reveals a greater genius than we first thought. It is the most wide-ranging and deeply satisfying of all her Archives to date. Volume Five (The Geffen Years) is likely to be more of a challenge.
Goes well with…
Archives Volumes One, Two and Three and The Asylum Albums (1976-1980).
Release Date:
4th October 2024
Might suit people who like…
Geniuses
Goodbye Pork Pie Hat (with Herbie Hancock)
Terrific review, T
Sore tempted to start adding JM’s A sets to my mountain of box sets
Great review. Last night I saw Terry Reid at the Hare and Hounds in Birmingham. He had incorporated a verse of River into one of his songs. Afterwards he told of a conversation he had with David Crosby who maintained that Joni was the greatest musician he had ever worked with bar none.
Hopefully my copy of this will arrive today. This and volume 3 were the ones I wanted most – as you say the Gergen Years might be more of a challenge
Of course, Terry Reid himself has a song called “River” (on the 1973 album of the same name).
I wonder if he incorporated a verse of Joni’s “River” into his own “River”?
@duco01 yes he did – exactly and it worked well
Brilliant as ever Tig. I’m sorely tempted.
PS John Guerin Shirley?
It’s a fair cop
Cuh!
We’ve all done it.
Excellent review as usual. Gotta say I never detected any tension with the band listening to Shadows And Light.
Shadows And Light is superb. This gig less so. IMV, of course
It was the ’76 L.A. Express tour where there was tension and then an acrimonious end. The Shadows And Light tour was 3 years later and harmonious, with a different band. Seemingly Jaco was behaving himself on that tour.
The band on Shadows And Light is stellar: Jack Pastorius bass, Don Alias drums, Pat Metheny guitar, Michael Brecker saxophone, Lyle Mays piano, The Persuasions guest on two songs and never underestimate Joni’s own guitar playing.
Is Jack the younger brother of Jaco?
F***ing autodiktat!
😀
Wasn’t he the legendary giant killing twin?
Arf!
I like the way your avatar is winking.
Ah ok. Thanks Mike
Lovely review as usual. I was expecting this to be delivered today but I’ve just received an email informing me that delivery has been delayed for an unspecified passage of time. Big first world swizz.
Excellent review.
I add (especially) Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen to your list of 70s greats.
Knew this would be a great review. I literally get excited (not that sort of excited, Moose) when I see a newly posted Tiggerlion review. This is my favourite period of Joni, so I will look about acquiring this set….
Where is that confounded Moose?
Hopefully unavoidably distracted on other matters of import, and otherwise well.
My favourite period of Joni’s work also.
Particularly interested to hear the live material from the ’79 shows and the rehearsal recordings.
1. Thanks for the review, Tigger. As informed and considered as always.
2. I’ve ordered the Archives volume 4 set from Amazon France. I’m hoping that it’ll arrive in a week or so, but that doesn’t seem to be certain. A lot of people on the Steve Hoffman forum have – like Pencilsqueezer – received a message that there’ll be a delay in dispatching the sets.
3. I’ve spent the past week revisiting Joni’s Archives volume 3 boxed set, and it certainly is an absolute treat. It made me wish I’d purchased Volume 2, as well. But one can’t keep forking out the dosh for boxed sets.
4. Tigger, you say that Rolling Thunder was Joni’s “last flirtation with a male-orientated Rock tour”, but didn’t she go on a triple-header US tour with Mr whiffy-harmonica Van Morrison and Bob Dylan in 1998?
Thank you. All the Archive sets are exemplars of their type.
I’ve conveniently forgotten that 1998 tour.
Here in the UK Amazon are stating Tuesday October 8th as a delivery date for orders placed today so fingers crossed they will honour pre-orders no later than that or it makes the whole pre-ordering shenanigans pointless. It’s available on Tidal, I imagine it’s available on the other streaming platforms also. I bought volume three upon it’s release and now volume four, these are the only ones I desire.
It was on sale in my local HMV this morning so can’t be too many supply problems.
That’s simultaneously heartening and annoying. I can’t access bricks and mortar outlets due to being virtually housebound nowadays otherwise I would have saved myself the irritation and bought a copy over the counter this morning.
3 and 4 are the only ones I desire too.
Ordered mine from JPC Germany and they confirmed it was posted yesterday so hopefully tomorrow will be landing on my doorstep.
Just received an email informing me that it is now being dispatched. Fingers crossed for tomorrow or Monday.
Same here, but mine’s coming from CA so may take a few days more!
Just pause a moment for that cover photo. As perfect as the music
Absolutely!
Bloody beret afficionados. Probably think Richard Thompson is the apogee of masculine pulchritude purely because of his ubiquitous headgear.
But he wears a balmoral…. Do keep up.
Hat snob.
Arf! 😉
Talking of wonderful Joni album cover images – how about the LP cover of the “Hejira Demos” breakout release for RSD Black Friday? It’s another winner!
https://img.broadtime.com/Photo/418467282912:800
Just noticed the CD box is down to £66.24 on the dodgers UK site.
Think i might bite at that price..
It’s all available today on every official streaming site. Given the sound quality of these sites nowadays why would you want to spend X on the physical product? I assume Tigger listened on a stream so why don’t you? Please don’t say “Who knows when all this streaming though the internet will stop?” cos it won’t. Maybe not in its present form, probably through a microchip embedded in your left nostril, but it’s here to stay. Forever.
By the way, if anyone’s interested in my opinion, Hissing Lawns is very very good, Hejira is one of the finest things ever recorded Don Juan is passable and Mingus is self-indulgent poop.
Start streaming at “Volume Four” then. You might find the poop surprisingly good.
😄
I stream music from Tidal everyday but I still like to buy physical copies of releases I really enjoy from artists I like to support more directly. The other reason is not everything is available via a streaming service. I like The Necks and most of their output isn’t available via streaming so the only way I can listen is if I buy physical product.
Streaming for me isn’t instead of it’s as well as.
I’d want a bit more assurance than “… maybe not in its present form”.
You can’t get more assurance than having the actual product.
I’m going to hold on to my 78s cos, you know, apocalypse and everything.
Do you stream to your car?
Parked up high on Dartmoor, I can open the doors (weather permitting) and blast out Egdon Heath from the rather good stereo system in my Forester and wallow in its gloriousness within the landscape.
Once the music has subsided, I can reflect smugly on the fact that any numpty foolish enough to have been finagled into relying only upon internet connectivity is probably only capable of hearing flies buzzing at this point in time and space.
Purely in the spirit of fairness I feel I should point out that anyone who is subscribed to a streaming service such as Amazon, Spotify, Tidal etc can download any file onto a device of their choice for offline listening.
Stream to my 15 year-old car? I spent thirty years listening to music in my cars. Since retirement, nothing not even the radio. I prefer silence (although the silence is sometimes pierced by my wife’s cries of “Brake, brake – there’s a lorry turning half a mile away!”)
I have a very noisy car (convertible) and thus don’t bother with radio or CDs.
Didn’t used to bother much with my previous car, to be fair.
Yes I have the Plex server which means I can stream my own library anywhere I have internet. However am on a fairly low data plan so for car journeys I will select a few albums and download them to my phone before heading off. This connects to the car radio via Bluetooth or you can use a cable connected to Aux input. I still have a CD player in the car and occasionally use that too. Less and less though.
I am dreading my car CD player dying, altho I have a back up I can plug in for any future vehicle. I do a ton of online reviews these days, and the days of a parcel plopping on the mat with hard copy is diminishing, if not yet gone entirely. But, as long as I get a DL, I can burn to disc. The bastards who only send me streams will get very short shrift unless it is something I really really want to get my teeth into, i.e, as in something I might even buy. (Using, probably, the meagre earnings one of the US based sited pays me.)
The hi fi buffs may turn up their ears at my preference for in-car listening, but it is the only place where I can give undivided attention, give or take other road users. And, if it sounds good in a car, the chances it will sound good on anything, a bit like the Danny Baker(??) comment about the purpose of good pop music is to sound good on a transistor radio.
Expecting the worst, Apple Music (née i-tunes) has the advantage of letting you add your own music to the streamable library, thus making it possible to listen to as yet unreleased material via phone etc etc, one of the reasons I chose/stuck with it.
I tried it…but it was too difficult to turn the LPs over, especially on the motorway – and the valves made the cockpit too warm, even with the AC on…
Joni Mitchell’s not long returned to Spotify after two years away after pulling her catalogue following all the kerfuffle about Joe Rogan and Covid. So in her case particularly, a hard copy might not be such a bad idea, I’d have thought.
She’s always been on Tidal, which is much better quality than Spotify. Been listening to it this week and very good it is too.
If it disappears from your streamer of choice, you can always buy then and you’ll know if you really want it.
Oi! Joni people! Where’s my copy? Brill review. Been looking forward to this set since it was announced. Got all the previous ones, enjoyed them all, but this one is the motherlode for me.
Think I might have a good old Tidal wallow in this box-set today.
And then it’ll be teatime.
I think Joni Mitchell is a genius, and own a number of her albums. However I can only take her in bite sized pieces. After 4 or 5 tracks I want to put something else on. Don’t think Iwould ever get through one of these box sets, which actually seems to be my fate for a number of artists, even ones I like more.
Know what you mean. I now take a very deep breath before buying huge and hugely priced box sets
I don’t buy them for that reason.
I do believe that one of the main aims of her Archives series is to be as completist as possible, releasing everything she has to please her more dedicated fans. That’s why the studio albums are in a different box.
They are in chronological order. You can dip in at any point you like.
Yes, that’s also why I prefer ripped CDs or downloads to vinyl for such sets (with some exceptions), there normally lots to skip
Is there anyone, apart from some completing nerd on here, who listens multi comprehensively to these, I quite, bloated box sets? There are gems to be found in there, that’s a fact, but surely most box sets sit on their alphabetically arranged shelves largely unplayed?
Having bought waaaaaaaay too many box sets I hardly ever look at – never mind play – I’ve belatedly reached the same conclusion myself.
What I now do each time I am consumed by an irrational urge to splurge is to leave the box in my Amazon shopping cart/”saved for later” list for a few days until the madness has abated
Auto correct is annoying, isn’t it? Substitute completist and quote and my post is almost literate….
Don’t despair, Lodey, the system finds my humble efforts so incomprehensible, it sometimes posts them twice
I hope none of the people I listen to on a regular basis get called a genius.
There can’t be a more -off-putting word in pop music.
I want my doctor to be a genius, not Jimmy Reed.
“Rapist”?
Not even Ray Charles?
To be fair, I don’t think I’ve used the word before.
Careful now.
Love the review Tig and kind of enjoying the music but it feels a bit bloated tbh. Too many live tracks (for me) but am finding gems along the way. I’m going to create my own playlist of this one and the previous Roses/court/Hissing set
You have a point. The Rolling Thunder tracks are excellent and the Bread & Roses appearance really special. The solo spots on the 1976 tour are fascinating. However, having worked your way all the way through to disc five, the 1979 tour full gig can be a bit much. All the studio material, pretty much, is superb.
The beauty of all of these Joni Archives for me has been the tracks where it’s just her and her guitar (or piano). I love most of the recorded variations from over the years but hearing her perfect voice expressing these songs with no other accompaniment is a joy to listen to.
Absolutely! 👍
My drummer pal, who currently plays in the band “Hejira”, tributing Joni’s “Shadows And Light” album, said he was relieved to discover from the full Forest Hills Tennis Stadium concert on CDs 5 & 6 of the box that the stellar band on the S&L recording weren’t always that astounding and must have worked their way up to that level over the course of the tour.
It’s good to know a professional musician and über Joni fan agrees with me. 😀
Interesting (to me) that back in early ’76, when presumably these were fairly new songs, “Coyote” and “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter” were performed live as a continuous piece. Even demo-ed that way before being eventually separated.
The demo is especially beautiful
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=JaXufGs-AG4&feature=shared
Echoing all the applause for a great review, Tiggs. Of course, I will get this, but I really need to get round to taking the cellophane off Vols 2 and 3. Who knows where the time goes? No, sorry, that was someone else.