Monday, February 6, 2012

50th.... "These dark cafe days"



I've finally done it. Several weeks behind ideal schedule, I have reached my first milestone. 50 fine reviews in backlog, people! Next milestone is, of course, 75 - that's to let me celebrate more often.

Now on to the business at hand. If I'd been thinking about it, I would have picked a more grandiose commemorative CD, but this is the one I really wanted to hear this week.

Blue.

This may be the ultimate singer-songwriter album right here before you. Behold Blue. Behold Joni Mitchell in 1971, writing songs on the guitar and piano, not feeling too great about herself. Having split up with Graham Nash she went on a vacation in Europe and wrote most of the songs for this record, considered her finest work and one of the pinnacles of 20th Century music. The sound of the record is quite spare, yet incredibly unique. Joni tuned her guitar differently to augment her appreciation of jazz chords and also played Appalachian dulcimer in preference to it on some of the tracks. Additional guitarists (such as James Taylor and Stephen Stills) and a drummer help out on half of the ten tracks. Her subject is solidly confessional.

So it's the best summation of the singer-songwriter genre, but what is it that makes it good? There is firstly her supreme talent for songwriting. A Case of You is a fine example not only of her intricate melodies but also of her singing method. Each time she reaches the chorus she approaches it differently, altering what it was before. Her songs are unexpected. It's not surprising that she later tipped over into jazz experimentation but her early work makes for some of the most variated and mature music to fit in the singer-songwriter canon.

The subject of most of the songs written on Earth is love, in one form or another (that statistic was a guess, by the way, but a valid one). Consequent to love songs being a dime a dozen, most of them look pretty superficial and fall into one of two categories:
"I'm in love and it's a sunny day!" (Good Day, Sunshine)
"Some people cry and some people die by the wicked ways of love" (Heartbreaker)
Blue being an honest representation of how Joni was feeling at the time, it is not so easy to sum up. There is an overall downcast feel to the songs - it's a somber record, and a changeover one as her last allowance of a clear-cut, folkish simplicity of style and her first wholeheartedly confessional, first-person set of narratives. And yet, despite the somberness of the record, there's also an ambivalence that is, as far as I'm concerned, genius.

That mixed-up quality is clear from the start with All I Want. First off: her singing is incredible as she speeds through this ridiculously detailed jumble of melodic virtuosity and delightfully confused emotional imagery. It's a love song, homespun and quite ardent but almost the first thing she says is "I hate you some/I love you some/I love you when I forget about me." It's honest and revealing but most of the song is built on idyllic hopes and wishes that, together with the sheer amount of perception crammed in 3 1/2 minutes, makes the mood strangely complex and thoroughly charming.

My Old Man is Joni at the piano for an eloquent, simple vignette of a woman with whom "the blues collide" every time her lover goes away. It does not capture the attention quite as well as the opener, but it builds upon the theme of this first domestic chapter of Blue.

Little Green is somewhat left-field, a beautifully sung guitar ballad whose meaning the lyric does not entirely make clear. The welfare of a child is the focus as Joni wistfully lists what the child shall expect. "There'll be icicles and birthday clothes/and sometimes there'll be sorrow." It has a similar quality to The Circle Game and unlike the others, this song had been in storage since 1967 and so its thematic placement on the record is unsure and yet oddly suited to the recent material.

What's really out of place are the backing vocals on Carey. This song kicks off the "expatriate chapter" of the record (I'm serious, this is clearly divided into three parts). The song is snazzy and self-confident as Joni prepares to depart the roughshod bohemian life she's led on Crete. As she plans her departure to nicer climes "maybe I'll go to Amsterdam/or maybe I'll go to Rome/and rent me a grand piano/and put some flowers 'round my room," she thinks with passing regret about having to leave her "mean old daddy" Carey behind. Stills' guitar and bass and nice ways to expand the sound, but those backups are an unnecessary production flourish.

Most of these songs have the ring of prose about them but Blue itself is a poem. Joni was living in California (rock's tenth circle of hell) and this is her poetic glance at its dubious offers. "Well there's so many sinking now/you've got to keep thinking/you can make it through these waves." Metaphors of the ocean and tattoos are used, though for a purpose too obscure for me to grasp completely. Her singing on this one is heartbreaking.

California is the other side of the story, as the expatriate has had her fill of Paris and Spain and looks forward to coming back home. It's the brightest song in this crowd and includes some pedal steel for variety.

This Flight Tonight is the bridge from traveling to being down and out. Love, a subject skirted after the first two songs, can no longer be drummed out. For the first time, a sense of genuine regret and uncertainty greets the wandering heroine as she flies across Nevada and longs to turn around. Still sporting pedal steel, the sound is darker, Joni sounds more distracted. Best of all, though, is the radio cut-in from a song she's hearing on the airplane. For some reason, that's what gives this song its kick.

By the time of River, Joni's singing of being trapped, all alone, rooted in one place with only her self-awareness left. A simple piano accompaniment that sounds at first like a distortion of Jingle Bells enhances the sense of holiday blues. She clearly misses the Canadian winters. "I wish I had a river/I could skate away on/I wish I had a river so long/I could teach my feet to fly." It's one of the most acute cases of regret depicted in music.

A Case of You is, I believe, the first Mitchell tune I ever heard and which left me non-plussed for the longest time. It's one of her best, most ambiguous, lyrics. "Oh I am a lonely painter/I live in a box of paints/I'm frightened by the devil/and I'm drawn to those ones that ain't..." Entirely complicated, she doesn't even sing the same number lines in each verse. It never ceases to amaze me how she fits melodies onto what appears in print so solidly prose. This strange tale of devotion in hindsight compares a man to holy wine, the title referring to how much of him she thinks she can take.

The Last Time I Saw Richard is the summation of every small event in past songs. The contrast is astonishingly simple as it merely tells of a conversation between Joni and Richard where he dismissed love as "pretty lies" and she, the idealist, defended it. And in the present, Richard is settled down and married while Joni's lost in sorrows and cynicism. However, this happens to be the most upbeat downbeat finale I've ever encountered on CD (and a complete reversal of All I Want). "All good dreamers pass this way some day/hidin' behind bottles in dark cafes/.../only a dark cocoon before I get my gorgeous wings and fly away/only a phase, these dark cafe days."

I have only heard three Joni Mitchell records. Thought all are excellent, Blue is far and away the best of them. With a psychological realism that never takes an easy way out in the complexities of feeling, sparse musical materials, a way of getting the most out of a song and a stunningly emphatic voice, I think this must be the single greatest accomplishment in the realm of the singer-songwriter.