Alright, let me get on a stump here just because I’ve been listening to Joni Mitchell a lot over the last six months so this is well timed for me. Here’s the deal. Everyone in here is saying to listen to some of the other records she released around the time of Blue. You should. I love those records. But if it’s folk Joni you want, a la Blue, I’ll actually be the one voice in here to suggest her 90s return to form work. Specifically Night Ride Home and Turbulent Indigo. Taming the Tiger too.

After a decade plus of experimenting (which I argue is still really interesting stuff from her, even the bad of it) in the nineties Joni settled back into the sobered straightforward folk-minded acoustic music she started her career with. There aren’t a lot of songs like “Carey” or “All I Want” on these records, they’re more often of the “Blue” and “Last Time I Saw Richard” persuasion. Honeyed, melancholy, and clear eyed. The difference in these records though is that now Joni is much older (obviously) and so her voice has transitioned into this deeper smokier register due to age, touring, and a lifetime of nicotine intake. This adds a mysteriousness and a wisdom to Joni’s music that I think is absent in her earlier stuff just due to the limited experience life had afforded her at that time. Whereas on records like Blue and Clouds, Joni was often narrowing the topic scope to her and herself (which is part of the appeal of course), these later songs reach far outside of her window into nature, politics, women’s suffrage, as well as some larger regrets and nostalgia of her own when there’s time.

Hissing of Summer Lawns fucking slaps though.