Night Ride Home - Joni Mitchell

...listing:

Night Ride Home
Passion Play (When All the Slaves are Free)
Cherokee Louise
The Windfall (Everything for Nothing)
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Come in From the Cold
Nothing Can be Done
The Only Joy in Town
Ray's Dad's Cadillac
Two Grey Rooms

  ... more

If Kurt Cobain was labelled spokesman for his generation, Joni Mitchell was just as surely lumbered with that role for hers. Younger listeners, who could almost be Joni's grandkids, may find that hard to believe. So, how to describe the status of one of the truly legendary figures of popular music?

Well, spokesman for a generation is a bit misleading. That tag was foisted on her when she wrote the song 'Woodstock'. But the irony was, she wasn't even there: the song came out of the fact that she got stuck in the traffic jam leading to the festival. It's truer to say that she, along with a few others such as Bob Dylan and Paul Simon, created the singer-songwriter genre. Some would call her the greatest example. She's certainly made her mark: you can trace a direct line from Joni Mitchell to newer singer-songwriters she's influenced - from Beth Orton to Tori Amos, as well as dozens of earlier examples.

So it's sad that she has such a low profile today. By the early 1990s, when 'Night Ride Home' came out, she was no longer the star she once was. She can probably handle that: even at Woodstock, she was an outsider. But as she sings on this album "All I ever wanted was to come in from the cold".

'Night Ride Home' was released in the wake of a 'mid-life crisis' album ('Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm') in which Joni seemed to need to prove that she had the clout to get anyone she wanted to play on her records - as if that was ever really in doubt. In contrast, this is a laid-back, jazzy set, with an appropriately late-night feel throughout. There are big hitters discreetly guesting here - such as jazz giant Wayne Shorter's sax tootling gorgeously on a few tracks. But the overall feel is of a musician who knows she has nothing left to prove. After all, a good clutch of her albums - 'Blue', 'Court and Spark', 'The Hissing of Summer Lawns' - are genuine classics.

Her songs here are the mixture of the personal and the political that characterises most of her work. The opening title track paints a picture of acceptance and contentment - "I love the man beside me/We love the open road". This is a grown-up record by someone who has come to terms with who she is. The music shimmers - strummed acoustic guitar, muted pedal steel and slapped percussion (against a backing of chirruping cicadas on this track) - setting the instrumental tone of the whole album.

It's harder to pin down the subject of 'Passion Play' which is easily among Joni Mitchell's best songs. "Now you tell me/Who're you gonna get to do the dirty work/When all the slaves are free?" runs the chorus. But it's mainly about Mary Magdalene's view of Christ's crucifixion, with some vague environmental concerns thrown in for good measure. Like poetry, the lyrics work by suggestion rather than explanation, and are no less stunning for that.

In 'Cherokee Louise', Mitchell is looking back at her childhood, just as the later track 'Ray's Dad's Cadillac' revisits her teenage years. Here she's lamenting a friend's sexual abuse and lost innocence. 'The Windfall (Everything for Nothing)' attacks the American culture of greed and litigation. Then, in tune with the corruption covered by the previous tracks, Joni pulls off a setting of Yeats's apocalyptic poem 'The Second Coming', complete with drums that seem to echo from the very pits of hell.

As light relief, the track 'Come in From the Cold' speaks of someone coming to terms with growing old - giving up the rebellion of her youth. On 'Nothing can be Done' she sings "Oh I am not old/I'm told/And I am not young/Oh and nothing can be done".

As I said, this is an adult album - resigned to the impossibility of purging evil from the world, but full of wisdom too. The lyrics are dense and poetic, and the music is sophisticated and restrained. Limp Bizkit or Linkin Park it aint. But Joni Mitchell is more a spokesman for her generation now than ever, a generation which no longer believes it can change everything. She nevertheless gives us a hopeful reminder that, once the sound and fury of youth have passed, there can still be things worth living for.

Track listing:

Night Ride Home
Passion Play (When All the Slaves are Free)
Cherokee Louise
The Windfall (Everything for Nothing)
Slouching Towards Bethlehem
Come in From the Cold
Nothing Can be Done
The Only Joy in Town
Ray's Dad's Cadillac
Two Grey Rooms

 

...less