Joni Mitchell

For the past few days I have been intensively listening to music of Joni Mitchell whom I consider one of the greatest artists of 20th century so I might as well add some of my musings about this awesome Canadian lady. She is considered to belong in the holy trinity of pop songwriters - Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen and Joni are recognised as best in genre and though there are great differences between them, they influenced generations of musicians and inspired a lot of listeners around the world, with amazing body of work that works outside of "entertainment" and functions as intellectual food - in my case, I always found Joni a perfect soul-nurturing music that keeps my brain occupied. Where I need courage to face Dylan and have to be in right frame of mind to enjoy Cohen, I never had any problems with Mitchell who is a poetess of first order. All three of them were product of 1960s folk movement where focus was on interesting, original lyrics, all three had great success with hits covered by other artists and all three experienced occasional slip downward when moving away from pop format that audience expected. Where Cohen was never strong in music and often I find his albums unadventurous examples of dour repetition, both Dylan and  Mitchell fast outgrew their confessional folk roots and moved around in unexpected directions, as true artists would - even if this worked against commercial success, there was always a passionate cult following that supported them trough thick and thin to this day.

For me,  Roberta Joan Anderson is a ghost from cold, windy Canada. There's no way one can put her in the same category as Joan Baez, Judy Collins or any of the 1960s songbirds with guitar from that era, no matter how fiercely intelligent those other ladies were (or any of 1970s that followed) Mitchell always had that extra quality that placed her above competition - and she herself always hated being described in terms of "female songwriters" because in her opinion its unfair, disparaging and chauvinistic to box any artist this way. Come to think of it, nobody talks about Beethoven and Mozart in terms of "male artists" so there is something in what she is saying. Trough the years Mitchell's strong personality and opinions made her look like somehow aloof and (to put it mildly) disappointed in music business, hence her recordings are far and in between, specially as she focuses on painting and does not really care much about being saleable. Her early work (late 1960s/early 1970s) is my favourite, easiest to understand and still solid confessional songwriting. From mid-70s  she started to experiment with free form Jazz music, which is all fine for artist who wants to spread her wings above expected but as the subject of her songs became more vague, even her music somehow lost focus and she had lost quite a lot of followers (and baffles me as well). Mitchell whizzed trough 1980s more or less completely ignored and if she got noticed later it was always when she would tone it down and work in recognisable frame of whatever pop song means for her nowadays - she is showered with great awards today and people love her (old) songs but I have feeling that as musician Joni had moved so far away from mainstream that her later music is simply too cryptic for most of listeners.

Ah yes, how on earth I had ever discovered Joni - well,it was thanks to my Croatian rock diva Josipa Lisac who always talked about her in interviews so naturally I had to find out who this Joni person was, imagine my surprise when I discovered it was actually a woman. Because her albums were actually not released in Yugoslavia, the only one I stumbled upon completely by accident was one of her most uncompromising Jazz experiments from late 1970s ("Mingus") that totally confused me and for the life of me I couldn't understand why was my powerhouse vocalist infatuated with this strange, cold woman. Of course today I have her complete discography.

"Songs To A Seagull" (1968)
When Joni Mitchell today dismisses her early work, I believe its probably similar to embarrassment we feel looking at our high school pictures - in the meantime she outgrew this skin and moved on to new worlds, however the fact that her 25 years old self moves me so much even now (and I'm 44) speaks not only about the brilliant, white-hot imagination she had back than but also of my own soft spot for intelligent lyrics, poetic stories and simple music that don't need tons of backing musicians. This is not a communal experience - its a kind of album one listens alone, I always find "Songs To A Seagull" absolutely hypnotic and strange as it sound, true to myself, almost spiritual experience. Similar to reading a book that one can't shake off, this simple voice-and-guitar album is a collection of haunting, dreamy songs with a twilight atmosphere - even in a such crowded competition as 1960s acoustic folkie girls, Mitchell was standing head and shoulders above anybody around I know. Yes, its a thin voice of some arty, brainy little white girl (its easy to imagine her even if one is not familiar with the way she looked than) who probably adored poetry and foreign movies, but resistance is futile, I really, truly love this music and will always love it. This morning I had attempted to listen her 1980s work and found it insufferable ("Chalk mark in a Rainstorm" anyone?) - strange how Mitchell herself thinks her later work is more important but its this early stuff I find very powerful, not her later ecological ramblings.

"Clouds" (1969)
Gentle acoustic folk musings with clearly more confident sound - not that I ever doubted Mitchell's confidence, but where on previous album she was ethereal siren singing from some distant fog, here she could be next door beauty going trough her own poetry and diaries. It could as well be that young lady tapped in her own resources of dreams and realized this actually works, hence slightly firmer tone of her songs. It is still a quintessentially 1960s collection ready made for anyone to sing along with a guitar, a precocious arty little thing who spreads her wisdom while consciously ignoring pop fluff that (gasp) sells. Yes, perhaps she was a bit too young to sing about all that melancholy, doom and gloom but it certainly had its appeal and followers - Baez and Collins could occasionally write a song or two, but not a whole album worth of poetry like this. Both "Chelsea Morning", "Both Sides, Now" were already hit singles in covers by Judy Collins and its interesting to compare them to Mitchell's own versions. A haunting "Songs to Aging Children Come" is a highlight here, Mitchell using her delicate voice effectively harmonizing with herself, circling around the melody like some satellites around the star. "Grammy" that graced this album is in my opinion not for improvement over her previous debut as much for media visibility that resulted in higher charting and better sales - I still find "Songs To A Seagull" indefinitely more interesting and original than this album, which basically continues guitar-and-voice path. Mitchell produces and paints the beautiful cover.