FEATURE:
Second Spin
Joni Mitchell – Travelogue
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THIS is a rare Second Spin…
PHOTO CREDIT: Joni Mitchell gave a rare interview to Elton John on his Rocket Hour show/PHOTO CREDIT: Apple Music
where I cannot include the Spotify album at the bottom. The reason is that Joni Mitchell removed her work from the platform because of controversial comments made about the COVID-19 pandemic by Joe Rogan. I will drop in YouTube videos and, if you want to hear 2002’s amazing Travelogue, I have dropped in the album via Apple Music. 2007’s Shine was Mitchell’s final studio album, but I wanted to look ahead to the twentieth anniversary of Travelogue on 19th November. There are other reasons why I want to cover this album. You can buy it if you fancy, and I would urge any Joni Mitchell fan to add it to their collection! Travelogue is a double album by featuring orchestral re-recordings of songs from throughout her career. The follow-up to 2000's Both Sides Now (which had a similar format). Upon release Mitchell announced that it would be her last album, but she later recorded one further studio album. Another reason why I wanted to include Travelogue here is that, recently, Mitchell gave an interview to Elton John on his Rocket Hour show. The Guardian explains more. There was exciting news announced by Mitchell:
“Joni Mitchell has announced a new live album of her recent surprise Newport Folk festival performance. Speaking to Elton John on his Apple Music radio show Rocket Hour in a rare, wide-ranging interview, Mitchell confirmed that she and her team are “trying to” release an album of the show, a collaborative performance with US Americana singer Brandi Carlile which featured guests including Blake Mills, Marcus Mumford, Wynonna Judd and more. It was Mitchell’s first full performance in more than 20 years, and found the iconic folk artist singing from an onstage throne; at one point, during Just Like This Train, she stood to perform a guitar solo. “I couldn’t sing the key, I’ve become an alto, I’m not a soprano any more,” Mitchell told John of the rendition. “I thought people might feel lighted if I just played the guitar part … it was very well received, much to my delight.”
Elsewhere in the interview, which airs in full at 5pm today (12 November), Mitchell discusses the original reception to much of her work, which she says “made people nervous”: “People thought it was too intimate. It was almost like Dylan going electric. I think it upset the male singer-songwriters … It took to this generation, they seem to be able to face those emotions more easily than my generation.” She also expresses her “outrage” at wars (“I guess it’s an old hippy thought like make love, not war … you’d think we’d wise up and take care of the ecology situation instead of starting wars”) and describes Chuck Berry as the “goat”, an acronym for greatest of all time.
Mitchell has struggled with her health in recent years, suffering an aneurysm in March 2015. In the years since, she has made rare public appearances – she attended a Chick Corea concert a year after her aneurysm, and attended Joni 75, a 2018 birthday tribute concert in Los Angeles. Last year, she addressed her health issues in a rare public speech at the Kennedy Center, saying: “I’m hobbling along but I’m doing all right.” Earlier this year, she pulled her music from Spotify in solidarity with Neil Young, who had removed his music from the service due to its hosting of a popular anti-vax podcast. “Irresponsible people are spreading lies that are costing people their lives,” she said in a statement at the time. “I stand in solidarity with Neil Young and the global scientific and medical communities on this issue.”
Next June, Mitchell will perform her first headline concert in 23 years at Washington’s Gorge Amphitheatre as part of a two-night event called Echoes Through the Canyon – the second “Joni Jam” after the Newport Folk festival”.
As opposed an original studio album, a reworking and revisiting album like Travelogue is always going to divide people. It was the same when Kate Bush released Director’s Cut in 2011, where she tackled older songs from 1989’s The Sensual World and 1993’s The Red Shoes. People questioned the purpose of this album; others whether the new versions are any stronger than the originals. I love Travelogue, as Mitchell brings something new to these songs. It is a remarkable collection that everyone needs to hear. There were some mixed reviews for Travelogue. Rolling Stone were a bit puzzled and miffed. I think there were some unfair assessments. I want to bring in a more mixed review from the BBC before coming to one that is closer to the truth:
“Its hard to approach a double CD that tracks a whole songbook, re-cast as orchestral pieces, with anything but a sense of trepidation. And when bassist, co-producer and ex-partner Larry Klein tells you that: "...we have tried to maintain the same challenging spirit of adventure that has always been a part of [Joni's] music...take the time to let these versions of Joni's songs slowly wash over you'', you know that Travelogue isn't going to be an easy ride. You'd be right, too. Mitchell professes to be disgusted with the contemporary music scene and this is a supposed swansong. In summing up her career, this icon of cerebral West Coast songcraft has produced a substantial body of work without one iota of sentimentality.
One look at the musicians on offer here - Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Billy Preston, Billy Blades - gives one a distinct message: this is not music for idiots. This turns out to be both the album's strength and weakness. For all of her heavy friends, Travelogue can make for some heavy going. As on the previous Both Sides Now, Joni pitches her wonderfully matured (as in a fine wine) voice against an orchestra and becomes an interpretive singer; but this time of her own work. From Song To A Seagull all the way to Turbulent Indigo, songs are re-tooled and re-contextualized.
In most cases the results take a while to sink in, approaching a cumulative ambience that resists analysis. However, once the finer points are exposed it's plain that there's much to appreciate. Subtle arrangementsframe Mitchell's lyrics in a new light, making more recent work such as ''Sex Kills'' and ''Borderline'' seem even more like the tone poems she's obviously keen to move towards. Her jazz leanings are easily catered for by the stellar cast and one can't help but be impressed by tracks that swing as well as ''Be Cool'' or ''You Dream Flat Tires''.
It's when the Mitchell classics are attempted that listener tolerance is put to the test. Songs as historically contextualized as ''Woodstock'' or ''The Circle Game'' would probably be safer in the hands of others. Under her they merely turn from pointillistic snapshots into abstract expressionism. Vast swathes of strings add little to the original impact of the song.
As a touchstone of musical intelligence Joni's position is beyond question. However her stance over the last few years has veered towards the specious philosophy that older forms such as jazz or classical equate to more serious vehicles for her dissections of modern America. The fact remains that by the time of Hissing Of The Summer Lawns she was beyond this need for critical validity and, as such, Travelogue often smacks too much of revisionism. That said it's still head and shoulders above anything her contemporaries have offered us recently. And that's something we really should be grateful for. Let's hope it's not the last...”.
I am going to end with a more positive assessment from AllMusic. I think they drill down to the heart and purpose of Joni Mitchell’s Travelogue. It is a very perceptive and interesting review for an album that I think should have got a better reaction:
“According to Joni Mitchell, Travelogue is her final recorded work, and if that is so, it's a detailed exploration of moments in a career that is as dazzling as it is literally uncompromising. Over 22 tracks and two CDs (and as stunning package featuring a plethora of photographs of Mitchell's paintings), Travelogue is a textured and poetic reminiscence, not a reappraisal, of her work -- most of it from the 1970s through the 1990s. A 70-piece orchestra, as well as jazz legends Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, and Kenny Wheeler, drummer Brian Blade, bassist Chuck Berghofer, producer Larry Klein, and organist Billy Preston, among others, accompanies her. It's true that Mitchell dabbled in this territory in 2000 on Both Sides Now, but that recording only remotely resembles this one. Cast in this way it is true that this is no easy cruise, but given the nearly 40 years of her sojourn in popular music, Mitchell's work, particularly from the mid-'70s on, has been difficult for many to grasp on first listen and always gives up its considerable rewards, slowly making her records age well over time; they are not disposable as much of the music from her peers is. These completely recast songs cover the entirety of her career, from her debut, Song From a Seagull, to Turbulent Indigo (with certain albums not being represented at all).
It's true there aren't high-profile cuts here except for "Woodstock," which is radically reshaped, but it hardly matters. When you hear the ultrahip, be-bopping "God Must Be a Boogie Man," there is an elation without sentimentality; in the scathing and venomous "For the Roses" and "Just Like This Train," the bitterness and aggression in their delivery offers the listener an empathy with Mitchell's anger at the recording industry -- and anyone else who's crossed her. But while there is plenty of swirling darkness amid the strings here, there is also the fulfillment of prophecy; just give a listen to this version of "Sex Kills" that bears its weight in full measure of responsibility and vision. Her voice, aged by years of smoking, is huskier and is, if anything, more lovely, mature, deep in its own element of strength. The restatement of W.B. Yeats, "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," is more stunning now than ever before as is "Hejira." In "The Circle Game" and "Slouching Toward Bethlehem," you hear the ambition in Mitchell's musical direct as she has moved ever closer to the tone poem as a song form. Though it may not be as easy on first listen as Court and Spark, Travelogue will continue to unfold over time and offer, like her best work, decades of mystery and pleasure”.
The lack of well-known Joni Mitchell tracks explored on Travelogue shouldn’t put you off. It is a remarkable album from an artist who was thinking of ending her career. It has that sadness and sense of finality but, fortunately, Mitchell made one more studio album. Now that she is better (after suffering health issues over the fast few years or so) and there is news of a live album, I wonder whether she will record more music. It would be sad to think that this is it. I would recommend anyone who likes the music of Joni Mitchell to listen…
TO the wonderful Travelogue.