Joni Mitchell - Shine
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CD Details
Artist: Joni MitchellEdition: Music CD
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language)
CD Release Date: 2007-09-25
Music Label: HEAR MUSIC
Soundtracks:
- One Week Last Summer
- This Place
- If I Had a Heart
- Hana
- Bad Dreams
- Big Yello Taxi
- Night Of the Iguana
- Strong And Wrong
- Shine
- If
Music reviews of Shine
Music Review: My initial thoughts on the new Joni Mitchell album
Rating: 4 Stars
Initially I said I wasn't going to review this album right away. I said that Joni's albums have to live with you for awhile before you really get them. I will stand by that statement. However, on the other hand it's not every day you can write a piece about your initial reactions to a Joni Mitchell album. Since I'm given this rare opportunity, I'm going to steal the moment.
Usually when new albums come out I go to my 24 hour WalMart late late Monday night and get it off of the truck right out of the box. For the new Joni album, I wanted to wake up on a sunny morning, go out to lunch with my friend, and buy the album in the daylight. Since Starbucks was the catalyst for the new album, I wanted to buy the album right from the source. There is a 24 hour Starbucks in Tampa that may have sold me the album last night. From what I've read about SHINE before listening to it, this is an album about awakenings and a search for brightness in a dim time. So I stood by my choice to have the first time I heard these songs be with the sun shining on me.
My second initial plan was to keep the album wrapped and bring it home with me. Open it up in my fabulous bedroom and lay on my bed, read along with the lyrics, and listen. Upon awakening, I realized that I wanted to experience this album out in the world. Moving. In motion. In my car. So I ate lunch with my friend, the first Starbucks had no copies of the album (maybe the sold out!) but on the second try, I walked in and saw a bin full of...the new Joni Mitchell album!
I got to my car and went to a deserted parking lot. I love tearing the cellophane off of a CD and seeing what's inside. Initially, I love the cover for this album. Although I do enjoy thematic cohesiveness within a discography, at times a repetitive pattern can get stale. I am glad Joni choose to try something different than the "picture in a frame" presentation she's used quite often for the last 13 years for her cover art.
My first impression of the album was that there was no photo of Joni to be found. I found this to be telling and symbolic without even hearing the music. At times I've found Joni to be (albeit very lovingly!!!!) egotistical, and it says something about her evolution as a writer and artist that she's chosen to represent these songs visually with some haunting pictures drawn from the ballet inspired by her music.
I put the CD in my car stereo and let her rip. When I really thought about it...I realized how neat it was Joni opened this album with an instrumental. This is a first in the Joni discography, and the piece is gorgeous. This song was reportedly the song that reignited Joni's musical muse. You can hear the magic in the piano playing. Sometimes throughout the more recent years I've found Joni's piano playing to be a bit stale...she often employed the same similar rolling pattern with her left hand...(for musical geeks the 1st, 6th, 1st). What a pleasure to hear in this first instrumental, her most inventive and varied piano playing since at least Don Juan's Reckless Daughter.
When Joni's voice came in on the second cut I was moved to tears. It was good to hear the voice again. Singing her own words. I wonder what that voice had to teach me this time. I wonder what thoughts this album would leave me with?
And song after song unfolded. By the fourth cut, the inventive "Hana" Joni was entering new territory and pushing her sound like she hadn't in years. It bought a big smile to my face. In fact, throughout this album you will hear Joni playing her guitar and piano in ways we have no heard her play it on any previous release. Isn't that wonderful, considering this is her 16th album of original songwriting? Many times on this album I was reminded of "Paprika Plains" from DON JUAN'S RECKLESS DAUGHTER. I do wonder if Joni drew inspiration from that track when it was revisited and remixed for a compilation last year. Many of Joni's piano pieces on this album have a similar classical feel.
The new version of "Big Yellow Taxi" was an immediate winner in my book. The acoustic guitar shuffle was unlike anything we've heard from Joni, and it's not often a singer can reinvent one of their own songs this successfully. Cyndi Lauper failed with her acoustic re-castings of her old catalog. Mitchell herself tried to reinvent her back catalog with orchestral versions. That project was hit and miss at best. This time around, "Big Yellow Taxi 2007" has the eagerness and freshness of a brand new cut. And the accordion stabs were intentionally funny and refreshing on a such a ponderous album.
When initially reading this album I worried that it would be preachy. But listening to it, it is not. This album only stands as authentication that when Joni wrote her environmentally conscious music in the early 1970s, she really believed in what she was writing. Her love for mother earth is unfailing and constant. Through the years many of us (including myself) have fallen victim to the numbing society...the allure of living in the moment...the endless search for instant pleasures. This album is a dark blue wake up call to start thinking, challenging, and moving mentally forward.
Upon the second listening of the album, the messages were even stronger. This is perhaps the most intelligent album to be released in a long time. Quite often, it seems today's music is written and produced by and for people early in their journey of intellectual evolution. As I have grown up, and continued to try to challenge myself and think outside of the box...finding music that is still lyrically challenging and eye opening is a struggle. But I am thankful Joni is writing from her older-wiser-and unfaltering perspective. I relish her explorations of the human psyche on this album. I relish her acknowledgement that people searching for true mental health and simplicity in this crazy world are pioneers.
Listening to this album twice made me consider moderation. In these days I feel our culture desperately needs to acknowledge the need for moderation. For a few years I got so angry how people just wanted to have fun fun fun all the time mindlessly without consideration of consequence. And in those years I was a grouch and a loner. I do think there's a middle line. People should have fun, people should dance. But SHINE is a reminder how important it is to think, share, talk, and most importantly to just CARE.
"If", the closing track on the album, is deeply profound and excitingly stimulating. After years and years of feeling lost as a person without guidance...I am a person who isn't sold on organized religion...a person who tried but couldn't buy into the mantras and catch-phrases of the 12-step-program world...but still I try to be well in this world. This song is a nice guideline to live by and it gives me a state of existence to strive for.
Now, that I've written my initial thoughts...I am going to live with this album for awhile. Hope everyone is well...may all your little lights shine...
Description of Shine
Joni Mitchell is generally considered to be the single most important female singer-songwriter of the 20th Century. Her new CD features 10 great new songs that resonate on the level of some of her all-time classic work, with much of the material inspired by Joni?s passion to save the environment. Her lyrics on the subject are truly inspiring.Joni Mitchell Photos (by James O'Mara)
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More from Joni Mitchell
 Blue |  Court and Spark |  Hits |
 Ladies of the Canyon |  Hejira |  Clouds |
Shine may ultimately register as a "fans only" milestone, but it proves that Joni Mitchell retains many of the storied calling cards of her best albums. The searing lyricism of 1971's Blue and the penchant for self-redefinition hailed by 1974's Court and Spark make cameos here, but sadly, lesser efforts' drawbacks abound. True, "Big Yellow Taxi" reprises the environmental dystopia Mitchell first poeticized on 1970's Ladies of the Canyon, but the occasion only prompts new pedantic effrontery ("This Place," "If I Had a Heart"). In this regard, Shine's especially cloying title track marks the worst offender. Blissfully, though, "Hana" boasts a driving rhythm section and blurting squirts of electric guitar and saxophone in support of a compelling character sketch, and "If"--based on Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name--paints a lyrical message of affirmation in bold strokes. Mitchell's songwriting shines brightest at such singularly poignant moments where specificity of images meets the vagaries of the instrumental arrangements, and, in the end, these and other highlights ("Bad Dreams," "Night of the Iguana") definitively carry the torch. --Jason Kirk
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