Joni
When I was in my second year at college one of my major musical discoveries was Joni Mitchell. The public library in Brussels had a massive CD collection (including each and everyone of Joni's albums) and for the better part of that year I explored her work, chronologically. From the open-tuning songs on the 1968 album Song to a Seagull (released 2 months before I was even born), over the jazz-meets-beat-poetry-meets-world-music stylings of The Hissing of Summer Lawns right down to the (often maligned) albums on Geffen during the eighties like Wild Things Run Fast.
It's hard to pin down just what it was that attracted me so in her music. I already was a fan of Dylan and Young, but Joni seemed to inhabit her own musical and lyrical universe. Her use of open tunings made her chords sound like no other guitar player and her voice was flexible and fearless. And the lyrics were just more intuitive, more feminine than those of Bob or Neil. At first they were very autobiographical, but later, on albums such as Hissing and Hejira, they evolved into an almost condensed literature with characters so fully-fleshed out they seemed to jump out of your headphones.
A recent favourite is Travelogue, an album in which she revisits a large part of her back-catalogue, this time in orchestral versions. Her voice has deepened and mellowed, but the songs are still just as powerful. When I went back to college, 5 years ago, I noticed that she wasn't exactly a household name with the kids at the institute. It was a bit strange, but nice, then to see Joni pop up on the cover of some music magazines recently. The reason is a tribute album featuring some big names (although it has to be said no one sings Joni like Joni, fair attempts by Bjork and Prince notwithstanding) and the announcement of a new album that's to be released shortly.
I for one am glad that she's decided to come out of early retirement. On the big to-do list of my life, getting to see her live is still on there unchecked. Here's hoping she'll tour again the coming year and make her way to some stage in Europe.
