Search - Joni Mitchell :: Shine

Joni's autumnal masterpiece, and another musical step ahead

Stephen Silberman | SF, CA USA | 09/25/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Joni Mitchell's first album of new songs in nine years finds her mourning the sad state of the planet, but with a newfound acceptance that all things have their place in the universe ("bad dreams are good in the great plan," as she puts it here, quoting her young grandson) -- including her own anger and disappointment. Despite the numerous Robinson Jeffers-like call-outs of money/corruption/greed/rage/war and the incivility of humankind, the album does not end up being disheartening, but the opposite. Her voice -- husky with age and chain-smoked American Spirits -- shines with a warrior's strength and defiance even in ragged armor, like Billie Holiday's late recordings. And most wonderfully, Joni is still pushing her music into vital new territory, foregoing the synthesizer-guitar textures of "Taming the Tiger" for piano, horns, percussion, and other warmly organic voices.



She boldly opens the album with an instrumental, which struck me as an ungenerous move on first hearing, but in the context of the rest of the album makes perfect sense on Joni's terms, which are the only terms on which she makes records, bless her. (Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, and Neil Young -- her true peers -- also specialized in weirding out listeners who expected more-of-the-same with each new record.) Every song gets a distinctive orchestration of its own, from the percolating "Hana" -- a portrait of an old movie heroine, an Irish bodhisattva disguised as a traveling maid, who had "a special knack for getting people back on the right track" -- to a playful reprise of "Big Yellow Taxi" rescored like French circus music. "This Place" has particularly sleek and engaging sound, blending lap steel, warm horns, and bright keyboards, with its reference to a neighbor in rural British Columbia who says, "When I get to heaven, if it is not like this, I'll just hop a cloud and I'm coming back down here..."



My favorite track on the album is the final one, "If," which advances the sinuous groove of "Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire" and "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow" and other milestones into new realms. The lyric is paraphrased from a Rudyard Kipling poem, but Joni wrote the most stunning verse:



If you can fill the journey

of a minute

with sixty seconds worth of wonder and delight

then the Earth is yours

and Everything that's in it

but more than that

I know

You'll be alright

You'll be alright.



Fittingly, the title track "Shine" is the purest expression of the essence of this album. After reciting a litany of offenses against the spirit, she insists that the proper response is to "shine your little light" into every corner of your life. It's not polyannic New Agey jive, but more like the alchemy of heavy global lead into spiritual gold: with this song, Joni even transcends her own identity as an angry Cassandra issuing dire warnings to a culture that doesn't want to listen. She's no stranger to Buddhist subtexts in her work -- "Refuge of the Roads" on Hejira was, among other things, a tribute to the vajrayana master Chogyam Trungpa, and "Taming the Tiger" was an allusion to Tibetan meditation practices for quelling the ego's rages. In "Shine," the Buddhist analogue would be Dzogchen, the Great Perfection -- the recognition that everything is just right as it is, even the things that insult the ego and bruise the heart.



We're lucky to be alive on the same dying planet that she is."

Elegant and insightful

William Merrill | San Antonio, TX United States | 09/25/2007

(4 out of 5 stars)

"(4 & 1/2 stars) Joni Mitchell's latest CD is a most welcome return, and worth the wait. This was obviously a very personal work, as she not only wrote and sang the tunes, she also played the majority of the instruments and co-produced! (Two notable exceptions to the one-woman show are Bob Sheppard's adept sax lines and some sweet pedal steel by Greg Leisz.) The songs are classic Joni, sometimes swinging, other times brilliantly introspective, always thought-provoking. Some will almost certainly be added to my list of Joni Mitchell favorites, particularly the marvelous "Bad Dreams." Lyrically, her poetic insights are most timely, with comments on our destruction of the planet, the blindness of elected officials, the climate of hatred and tension which pervades, but also some much more intimate observations. To echo what others have said, as striking as this album has been the first couple of times through, I think it's something I will grow to appreciate even more in the coming years."

So worth the wait!

John E. Temple | Manassas, VA | 09/25/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Joni Mitchell has been my favorite singer since I was 18 years old, but I have to admit that I'm rarely immediately blown away by her new releases. The last time was the amazing "Turbulent Indigo". After such a long wait for new material, I was in equal parts excited to finally hear it and nervous that I wouldn't like it. I needn't have worried.



"Shine" is a wonderful CD!



Having listened to it four times already, I can honestly say that I love it. Starting out with the wonderful instrumental "One Week Last Summer", "Shine" remains lovely and poignant throughout. Some might be quick on the draw to dismiss it as just more of Joni whining about the world's woes as she sees them, but if you take the time to listen to the lyrics (and read along), you'll find that she is dead on. Something very different from her previous social commentary is the fact that, while Joni does decry the world's injustices, the overall tone is empowering... we all have the ability to change the course of fate. The song "Shine" really sums up the whole idea (or at least as I interpret it)... that whether what comes at you is good or bad, it's up to you to deal with life in a positive way. This is probably the most optimistic set Joni has ever done.



To my mind, there is not a false word or false note on here. Lyrically, I would say that Joni is as strong as ever, and musically, the sound is completely fresh, very atmospheric, and extremely well played and produced. As for my fear that Joni's voice would be weak and whispery, I actually think she sounds better than she did on "Taming the Tiger".



Each of the tracks on "Shine" stands on its own, but played in sequence they make for a really great set. One admission, and I'm probably on my own here... "Big Yellow Taxi" is the one slightly low point for me. While lyrically it fits the package and musically restyled it falls into place, it has never been my favorite Joni song (save the really great version she did in her concert "Painting With Words and Music"). It's not a bad cut... it just doesn't thrill me like the rest of the CD.



The packaging is really a departure for Joni. I always look forward to her paintings, but the photography is really stunning (or maybe it's just the dancers... geez, I need to work on my abs). There is a great clip on YouTube that has excerpts of an interview with Joni as well as bits from the ballet... definitely worth seeing.



All in all, I am thrilled with this CD, and so happy to see Joni in top form... thanks for this!"