Joni Mitchell - Confessions in Blue

It's hard to pin down exactly what the singer-songwriter genre is. In fact, it's a genre with no precise formal characteristics. It's not so much the arrangement that needs to carry the song, but the lyrics. A lucid, original capacity for analysis, together with a poetic gift for translating one's own feelings into verse, are instead the traits any singer-songwriter must possess. The first singer-songwriters emerged in the Sixties, but all of them were influenced by, or overshadowed by, the towering presence of Bob Dylan. Only at the start of the Seventies did this school manage to branch out. Compared to Dylan's socially engaged, politically committed folk songwriting, though, the themes certainly became more intimate and personal. Among the women who emerged was a Canadian girl from Alberta, born Roberta Joan Anderson. Namely Joni Mitchell, destined to become one of the most important and influential singer-songwriters in the history of rock.

Although she showed great technical skill on piano, ukulele and guitar from a young age, that isn't what pushed her to write her first poems. As Mitchell herself has recalled, it was overcoming polio, which struck her hard at age nine, that led her to develop a deep artistic sensitivity. "That great sorrow made me better," she once said. The person who helped shape this artistic bent was a middle-school teacher, Mr. Kratzman, who encouraged her in both painting and poetry. "If you can paint with a brush, you can paint with words too," he liked to tell her. And it was to him that Mitchell dedicated her 1958 debut album: To Mr Kratzman Who Taught Me To Love Words.

After high school she enrolled for just one year at the Alberta College of Art in Calgary, but she quickly realized that her passion for painting, poetry and music was so strong that it needed to be expressed freely. She began performing around Canada in various live music clubs and small festivals, including the prestigious Mariposa Festival. In the meantime she had settled in Toronto, and her husband was musician Chuck Mitchell, by whom she became pregnant with a baby girl. In dire financial straits, the couple decided to give the baby up for adoption a year after her birth. Their marriage, too, lasted only a year. Mitchell then moved to New York, where she met Elliot Roberts, who would become her manager, as well as ex-Byrds member David Crosby, to whom she played her songs. She followed them to California, the new frontier of the folksinger scene. Among those she met there was Judy Collins, who began recording songs written by Mitchell, such as "Both Sides Now".

By the time Joni made her debut in 1968 with her self-titled album, her name was no longer unknown. The already-mentioned "Both Sides Now", along with other songs already recorded by other artists such as "Circle Game" and "Urge for Going", were set aside in order to present new material, and would resurface on her next two records. On Joni Mitchell, standout tracks include "Night In The City" and "Marcie". Orchestral arrangements are abandoned in favor of guitar alone, which lets the lyrics — always deep and delicate — stand out even more. But what strikes just as much is her voice, marked by a crystalline, refined contralto.

The release of her second record, Clouds, boosted her popularity to the point that "The Voice" himself, Frank Sinatra, immediately covered her "Both Sides Now", and she was invited to the Woodstock Festival, which she ended up skipping on her manager Roberts' advice. In exchange, however, she recorded the now-famous "Woodstock", which was later included both in the soundtrack of the documentary film and on her 1969 third album, Ladies Of The Canyon. The response from both audiences and critics to this concept album, centered on themes of inadequacy and existential unease handled with a distinctly feminine sensitivity, was immediately positive. Autobiographical, ironic and melancholic verses mark "Morning Morgantown" and "Conversation", while sadness mixed with a glimmer of hope pervades "Rainy Night House". Thanks to songs like these, Mitchell would become a leading figure of "confessional folk", defined by intense, sincere lyrics and an unprecedented, original candor, pushing the modern language of popular music toward new horizons. Ladies Of The Canyon in any case revealed the great compositional skill of the Canadian singer-songwriter, along with a handful of pleasant, catchy melodies, now also accompanied by piano. Her vocal technique too — built on the contrast between high tones and deeper ones, roughened by the smoking habit she picked up at age nine right after her hospital stay for polio — had a powerful emotional impact on the listener.

By then Mitchell had become a folk star, so much so that she was enlisted by Carole King for her "Tapestry" and by James Taylor for his "Mud Slide Slim And The Blue Horizon".

At the start of the Seventies, having become fully aware of her stature as a composer, Mitchell reached her artistic peak. The first of her classics is Blue, from 1971. The guiding theme is the same as in Ladies of The Canyon: the unease running through everyday life, but with tones that are less picturesque, less sunny and ironic. In exchange, the focus sharpens on personal events, leading her even to harsh admissions of guilt. As in "River", where she recalls giving her daughter up for adoption, or in the love that's gone in "Last Time I Saw Richard", unlike the less significant personal memories of "Ladies". But what really strikes is her romantic attitude in the pursuit of happiness, which nonetheless proves impossible. The result is a lasting melancholy — Blue, precisely. From "All I Want": ⟦Q1⟧. Her personal experiences become a universal, never rhetorical feeling, all filtered through a distinctly feminine sensitivity. That's why in "This Flight Tonight", "A Case Of You" and the title track, Mitchell seems to be saying that unhappiness isn't just the product of one's individual condition, but also of the obstacles placed by the people one meets along the way — a path metaphorically represented as a journey. In Africa, for the song "Carey", and in California. For its lucid analysis of pain, for that supremely elegant folk-pop, a close relative of rhythm and blues, and for its disarming sincerity, the Mitchell of Blue strongly recalls Billie Holiday.

The follow-up, For The Roses, and its hit single "You Turn Me On I'm a Radio" from 1972, once again showed a clear-eyed artistic sensibility, and at the time the New York Times even wrote, "Maybe she can't help us, but Joni Mitchell certainly makes us feel less alone." Besides her music, Joni kept expressing herself as a painter. Her paintings were nothing less than visual renderings of everything she sang about on her records: they rounded out the way to read her work, much as poems did for Patti Smith.

In 1973 came another of her masterpieces, Court And Spark, also her biggest commercial success. The jazz-inflected sound already hinted at the experimental drive that would later peak with Mingus in 1979. Listening to the songs on this album, it feels as though the energy that on Blue had distilled into pain caused by places and people that brought unhappiness has here turned into desire and effort in the pursuit of happiness — a kind of challenge she sets for herself. "Help Me" is certainly the song that best captures both the desperation and the determination behind this search. But the album also contains two other hit singles: "Raised On Robbery" and "Free Man In Paris". Joni Mitchell confirms herself as the most "aristocratic" of singer-songwriters, not only in attitude (always impeccable), but also in her musical quest, aimed at breaking past the boundaries of folk to reach the territories of avant-garde jazz.

In 1975, on Hissing of Summer Lawns, the Alberta-born artist moved away from her confessional folk and personal themes toward a social analysis of the era. Many critics turned up their noses, and plenty of fans were thrown off too. Certainly, the jazz sound of "Court and Spark" had already hinted at this hunger for something new. And in any case, her earlier work, even when starting from autobiographical sparks, had become universal experiences. Now the opposite journey was taking place: starting from the social reality of the United States, from racial issues to political ones, in order to arrive at personal opinions. Many critics faulted the record for a certain "clinical" quality. It was finally 1976's Hejira — its title referring to the Prophet Muhammad's flight from danger — that won them back over. The guiding theme is that of the journey, explored through symbolic readings. Rather than offering answers, it invites questions. But Hejira would remain Joni Mitchell's last true "confession". In compensation, though, the musical experiments of her following records would reveal new and (partly) hidden strengths of the Alberta artist as a musician — starting with Mingus in 1979 and her collaboration with Charles Mingus himself. And the records of the Eighties would also remain thoroughly dignified, from the more commercial Dog Eat Dog to the more folk-leaning Chalk Mark In A Rainstorm (featuring guests such as Willie Nelson and Peter Gabriel).

In the Nineties, with the partial exception of 1994's Turbolent Indigo, her poetic vein seemed to have dried up, and even on her recent Travelogue, despite attempts at evolution, the personal memories she sings about aren't always effective.

In 2002, Joni Mitchell returned to the music press headlines for a statement that raised eyebrows only among those still pretending not to know the rules of the record industry: "I'm ashamed to be part of the music business, it's a cesspool," she told the American magazine Rolling Stone. "And that's why I've decided to retire."

Five years later, it must have cost quite a lot for an artist who has made consistency one of her virtues to shift into reverse, and on top of that to have her new album released by a label belonging to the Starbucks chain (Hear Music). Or perhaps, if one wants to be subtle about it, you could even detect a touch of sarcasm in the choice, as if to say that between lattes and records, these days, the industry makes no distinction at all.

Enter then Shine, album number 17 from the Lady in Blue, arriving almost ten years after 1998's "Taming The Tiger", and conceived also as a theatrical show and ballet, illustrated with photos taken by Mitchell herself. Ten tracks that, however, as one might have feared, don't add much to her catalogue, beyond confirming the class of a singer-songwriter capable of flirting with jazz ("Bad Dreams"), sketching delicate acoustic vignettes ("Strong And Wrong"), or reciting verses by Rudyard Kipling ("If") with practiced nonchalance. Too often, though, a yawn lurks nearby, and self-indulgence shows through.

Still, at the end of the day, seeing the Lady Of The Canyon in good shape at 64 is already good news.

Contributions by Claudio Fabretti

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