Disc of the day
Heaven 17 - Penthouse And Pavement
From Sheffield, synth pop and funk to stick it to Thatcher. Currently being played live!
Features Disc of the day
Joni Mitchell
Joni Mitchell/Song To A Seagull
(Reprise, 1968)
Forty years on, western Canada’s song-genius’s first sweet and eerie foray. Go on, have a fag!
Oftentimes, Joni Mitchell’s called her weird tunings “chords of inquiry” that remain “unresolved.” There’s no shortage of questions on her first album, ranging from what it’s actually called (word is, pressing-plant bungling made it appear eponymous when it wasn’t, or maybe it was) to why she saved already-written gems Both Sides Now and Urge For Going for later release, to what the commanding songs and atmospheres within the LP’s folky-acoustic grooves are actually signifying. It’s split into two five-track suites entitled ‘I Came To the City’ and ‘Out Of The City And Down To The Seaside’, but despite the presence of two fairly straight, up evocations of urban and rustic living (that’s Night In The City and Sisotowbell Lane, respectively), elsewhere those Chords Of Inquiry hold resolute sway. Other hitmakers of the year were happy to ride the Magic Bus or even suggest this; here were reflections of greater, possibly autobiographical gravity, where romance grows and withers as the narrator swings between sounding 16 and 90, her dextrous, operatic voice combining with boundlessly melodic guitar to stunning effect. Sadness is often observed, but the singer doesn’t go overboard; in Marcie, a frustrated protagonist awaits a letter from a man who’s possibly referred to in closing song Cactus Tree, who is in turn awaiting a reply to a letter that he’s sent. Laconic references to “being so busy being free” further put the cap on hippy utopianism. Later in her still-jazzing career we’d get pop chart success, sudden leftward shifts and uncommon artistic triumph, but was anything quite so beautifully haunting as this?
Ian Harrison
Posted by Danny_Eccleston at 10:04 AM GMT 13/11/2008
Further Listening
Joni Mitchell – Clouds (Reprise, 1969)
Judy Collins – Wildflowers (Elektra, 1967)
Michael Head - Presents The Magical World Of The Strands (Megaphone, 1997)
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it's a wonderful album that does that rare thing of creating its own world. she never topped it
Posted by showbiz whines at 8:23 PM GMT 13/11/2008 Report Abuse
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RE: showbiz whines
I beg to differ.
Posted by Cat at 9:54 AM GMT 14/12/2008 Report Abuse
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