I often feel somewhat peeved at the adulation that Blue is regularly accorded, to my mind very much at the expense of other equally great Joni albums, from her mind-blowing ’68 debut, Song To A Seagull, to one of my personal favourites, For The Roses (1972). As Brandi Carlisle puts it in the liner notes to the recently released The Reprise Albums, 1968-71, whatever else might be right or wrong about the times we live in, we can at least say we lived in the era of Joni Mitchell. Amen to that.
Anyway, having got that out of the way, here are some notes I made whilst listening to the 50th Anniversary re-release of the Joni Mitchell Archives Demos And Outtakes release…
Wow! This is what we want. Or at least it’s what I want. I’ve been a bit of an ornery curmudgeon regarding the recent 50th anniversary celebrations of Blue. Sure, it’s a brilliant album, by the best female singer songwriter that’s ever lived. But it’s also the most talked about and lionised of her albums. And I always have issues with such adulation.
So, rather than joining the (very justified) hallelujah chorus singing the praises of the album itself, I find it far more interesting to discover new sounds from the period. And that’s exactly what these demos and outtakes provide. Okay, there are only five tracks, and of those only one – Hunter – is out and out new to me. And even this track is familiar, parts of the guitar sounding very like another Joni track I can’t quite put my finger on.
The full track listing is Case of You, California, Hunter, River, Urge For Going. What I love is that these recordings are absolutely superb in quality – however they were recorded, they could easily be on any album – and yet they feel to me like they capture that perennial image of Joni as the girl with guitar and portable reel to reel, continually ‘sketching’ (‘I am a lonely painter’).
And, even better, these aren’t just track-x take #whatever, i.e. very like the tracks we know. They all have certain aspects that mark them out as significantly different. This is most obviously so on Case of You, which kicks things off. It’s a more staccato take, instrumentally, with quite a bit of difference in the lyrics. California is perhaps the closest to what you hear on Blue. But it’s still audibly different, if only quite subtly.
Hunter is – to me – completely new. Although, as already noted, it sounds like she may have recycled some of the guitar elsewhere. River is very like the version in Blue, except that at the end there are added horns, riffing on the Christmassy vibe Joni evokes by quoting that familiar seasonal melody I can’t name right now. And then there’s Urge For Going, which wasn’t on Blue, but is widely known, having been released elsewhere on numerous occasions. Again there’s a new element, this time overdubbed strings.
In conclusion, these recent archival releases are absolutely terrific! And these demos and outtakes partake of that grooviness. If you’re a Joni devotee, as I most unashamedly am, then this undeniably essential.