The Many Faces of Joni Mitchell
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
There's more to Joni than "Big Yellow Taxi."
Released late last November, the Joni Mitchell box set Love Has Many Faces: A Quartet, A Ballet, Waiting to be Danced (Rhino) is an achronological, eccentric offering. Compiled by Mitchell herself, the box eschews many (but not all) of her most well-known songs. Instead, the four-CD set frequently lingers in some of the stranger and sometimes more maligned corners of her career. One advantage to this is that Love Has Many Faces sheds light on the diversity of her work over the years. Here are a few songs that show that there’s more to Joni Mitchell than “Big Yellow Taxi.”
“All I Want” From Mitchell’s masterful, intensely personal Blue (1971), every line of this song perfectly describes and dissects human need. This is also the song Annette Bening sings in an amazingly raw scene in the film The Kids Are All Right (2010).
“Shades of Scarlett Conquering” Savaged by Rolling Stone upon its release, 1975’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns is now considered by many to be a masterpiece of intricate and elegant jazz-pop. The soaring piano and strings of this track accompany a devastating character study.
“A Strange Boy” Hejira (1976) is probably my favorite Mitchell album, and this is an excellent representative of its wintry, impressionistic sound.
“The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey” Wolves howl, congas rumble and Mitchell atonally beats the hell out of her guitar strings. This song originally appears on Mingus, her 1979 collaboration with/tribute to Charles Mingus and will scare the shit out of you.
“Harlem in Havana” One of Mitchell’s most unique soundscapes, this track from 1998’s Taming the Tiger mixes icy synths and grinding guitars with Wayne Shorter’s effortless saxophone. Melodically, the song displays her ability to fully integrate the rhythms and voicings of jazz into something wholly new.
