Joni Mitchell - Shine

More songs about taxis and inconvenient truths

On her first album of (almost) all new material in nearly a decade, Mitchell takes us all to task for what we’ve done to the planet. And boy, is she angry! There are no lily-livered pleas for more pro-active recycling here. Especially on the pivotal Bad Dreams Are Good, where she lays the blame squarely at mankind’s door: “You cannot be trusted… You have no grace, no empathy, no gratitude/You have no sense of consequence.” It’s a much more aggressive stance than the jolly eco-folk of Big Yellow Taxi, her 1970 breakthrough hit revisited here with polyrhythmic jazz figures, in keeping with the intricate musical arrangements of other treatises dissing our destructiveness (This Place, If I Had A Heart, Strong & Wrong). Shine could be seen as concept album in that respect, although it’s not all placard-waving. Night Of The Iguana condenses the Tennessee Williams play into three verses, while If restructures Rudyard Kipling’s poem to fit Steely Dan’s slinky jazz, closing proceedings on a note of hope. The second album, after McCartney’s latest, to be issued by the Starbucks-owned Hear Music, it’s fitting that Mitchell should exploit her new deal by urging us all to wake up and smell the coffee.

Hear Music/Universal | 7230457

Reviewed by Terry Staunton
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