The Album Review Club - End of Round #9 Break (page 1904)

[Bill Walker]

Hejira is the Arabic word for departure. She wrote the songs on a series of road trips apparently.

This one takes Joni in new direction again. The music flows endlessly, driven by the fretless bass of Jaco Pastorius who's a great companion on this record. Her voice sounds more mature and the lyrics are phenomenal.

I've always loved the vibe of this album, even the album cover is sublime.
Of course Joni is a master of lyrics, like Bob Dylan she meanders into otherworldliness and her melodies do seemingly the same.
Lovely poignant songs like "Amelia" ....Mitchell has commented on the origins of the song: "I was thinking of Amelia Earhart and addressing it from one solo pilot to another... sort of reflecting on the cost of being a woman and having something you must do."

Joni Mitchell complained to a friend that she disliked the bass players she’d tried to record with to date, describing them as placing “white picket fences” through her music, leading to her sometimes erasing them from her recordings.

She’s accompanied by Weather Report bass player Jaco Pastorius, who’s a notable new collaborator – his busy lines would be an important part of her output in the second half of the 1970s.
Taking the Jazz feeling further not so long after Hejira she would add that other Jazz virtuoso guitarist Pat Metheny to her band. Pity he wasn't on this album.
Jaco's fretless playing on the title track is sublime. As on "Black Crow" where he adds a funk touch, mixing genre's (nothing wrong with that).

Blue Motel Room is a nice intro to smooth Jazz for anyone who's not familiar. It swings, slowly.
Enough talk, just listen and soak in that wonderful poetic laid back vibe.

As mentioned before I give it 10/10. A true work of art.

 

[Bill Walker]

An excellent description by Rick Beato in his "What makes this song great" series of the second track Amelia.
Well worth a watch, shows how complex the arrangement is.

 

[GoatersLeftShin]

Hejira is the Arabic word for departure. She wrote the songs on a series of road trips apparently.

This one takes Joni in new direction again. The music flows endlessly, driven by the fretless bass of Jaco Pastorius who's a great companion on this record. Her voice sounds more mature and the lyrics are phenomenal.

I've always loved the vibe of this album, even the album cover is sublime.
Of course Joni is a master of lyrics, like Bob Dylan she meanders into otherworldliness and her melodies do seemingly the same.
Lovely poignant songs like "Amelia" ....Mitchell has commented on the origins of the song: "I was thinking of Amelia Earhart and addressing it from one solo pilot to another... sort of reflecting on the cost of being a woman and having something you must do."

Joni Mitchell complained to a friend that she disliked the bass players she’d tried to record with to date, describing them as placing “white picket fences” through her music, leading to her sometimes erasing them from her recordings.

She’s accompanied by Weather Report bass player Jaco Pastorius, who’s a notable new collaborator – his busy lines would be an important part of her output in the second half of the 1970s.
Taking the Jazz feeling further not so long after Hejira she would add that other Jazz virtuoso guitarist Pat Metheny to her band. Pity he wasn't on this album.
Jaco's fretless playing on the title track is sublime. As on "Black Crow" where he adds a funk touch, mixing genre's (nothing wrong with that).

Blue Motel Room is a nice intro to smooth Jazz for anyone who's not familiar. It swings, slowly.
Enough talk, just listen and soak in that wonderful poetic laid back vibe.

As mentioned before I give it 10/10. A true work of art.

Brilliant write up that @Bill Walker ! Agree with all of it!

It's better than my write up :)

 

[BlueHammer85]

An excellent description by Rick Beato in his "What makes this song great" series of the second track Amelia.
Well worth a watch, shows how complex the arrangement is.

Enjoyed that

 

[threespires]

Not a big Joni Mitchell fan but you'd be a fool to not acknowledge her as a great singer songwriter who was also smart (or demanding enough) to work with the best. Also her pig headed determination to do what she wanted, not what other people wanted her to do, was not only admirable but means her back catalogue is pretty varied and has got something for most people in it and this is one of the ones I really like. It's beautifully arranged, played and produced.

As has already been mentioned by many, Jaco Pastorius plays a big part in this album along with a number of other great musicians. By many accounts he was hard work to get along with and given Mitchell's reputation it might have been a car crash but it works so well.

My favourite tracks are Coyote, Hejira, Blue Motel Room and Refuge of the Roads but there no real duffers on this album. To me bits of her writing has always veered off into lyrical excess rather than poetry and this album is no different but that's a small niggle in the scheme of things. If I listen to solo acoustic versions of the songs from this album they don't do it for me in the same way so it's clearly a combination of the playing and the songs as far as I'm concerned. The musical direction also affects her vocal delivery on this album for the better too, smoothing some of the spikiness I'm less keen on .

This album signposts where she was off to musically for a few years which I think pissed off some of her fanbase but I quite liked the direction (I might be the only person I know who is happy to the listen to the Mingus album). So it's a winner for me. 9/10.

 

[BlueHammer85]

 

[GoatersLeftShin]

Wow, there's some talent in that room isn't there? Dylan, McGuinn and Lightfoot and the star of the show, Joni Mitchell herself!

It's great to hear this version as it shows that it's the song itself that's brilliant. Truly great songs can be played on a guitar through to a full orchestra.

I think tonight I'm going to play "The Hissing Of Summer Lawns", another of her masterpieces.

 

[BlueHammer85]

Wow, there's some talent in that room isn't there? Dylan, McGuinn and Lightfoot and the star of the show, Joni Mitchell herself!

It's great to hear this version as it shows that it's the song itself that's brilliant. Truly great songs can be played on a guitar through to a full orchestra.

I think tonight I'm going to play "The Hissing Of Summer Lawns", another of her masterpieces.

It’s great to finally give Joni Mitchell a full listen - not sure why I’ve always been put off considering how big of a Dylan fan I am

 

[Bill Walker]

If you listen to this live show here, with her band.
Notice that Joni's singing is perfect, not a single note off key.
Brilliant and very professional.

 

[RobMCFC]

Hejira – Joni Mitchell.

I don’t play an instrument, but even I recognise that the playing on this album is very good. However, sometimes this isn’t enough, especially for my ears. If I were to review this album in one sentence, it would be: “A few very good songs, surrounded by a lot of repetitive grooves”.

I do like an album where the instrumentalists share the limelight with the vocalist, but for too much of this album, any individual instrumental pieces are lost in a murky mix. For example, there’s a nice bit of clarinet on the title track, but it’s low in the mix and is gone almost before you realise it’s there. As others have commented, the bass of Jaco Pastorius is superb on the four tracks on which he appears, giving the album a nice bottom end with some slinky, smooth playing. It’s pretty sad when you read how he died in 1987.

The album kicks off with “Coyote”, which I found to be a nice mix of singing and the guitars.

“Furry Sings the Blues” sounds a little different because of the harmonica, which is tastefully played.

“A Strange Boy” starts with some really nice chords but it’s quickly back into the hypnotic (repetitive?) groove. “Song for Sharon” is a bit dull for the most part, even though I appreciated some nice changes between the vocals.

The shuffling guitars on “Black Crow” are great and at 4:23, it’s a nice change of pace after the two long songs that preceded it, especially with Joni putting something into the vocals.

For me, the title track is the album in the microcosm: you can’t say it isn’t nicely sung or played, because it is. But it rambles on for longer than is strictly necessary and there’s not enough to distinguish it from most of the other tracks that sit around it. Neither is there much excitement.

“Blue Motel Room” is in crooner territory. I know a lot of people like this genre, but it’s not for me.

Admittedly, I don’t listen to jazz and any jazz influence on the music I do listen to is usually made up of some expert piano or brass. Bruce Hornsby’s post-“and the Range” career is a good example, where he plays some great piano pieces and despite moving away from pop, is still not afraid to put some singable choruses in there. I think this probably says more about my tastes than this album in particular.

Having said all of that, I’ve listened to this three times now and it does make for an interesting listen. Two-thirds of the songs don’t bore me and three are pretty good - I could easily listen to them many more times again. At the end of my third listen, I enjoyed the vocals on the final track, “Refuge of the Roads”, where I hadn’t marked this as one of the best tracks up until that point, which just goes to show you that sometimes an album takes a few listens to resonate with you.

If there were more songs like “Coyote” and “Black Crow” and less plodding along like on “Amelia” and “Song for Sharon”, then I’d have rated it higher. I was going to go with 6, but I’ve had a lot of 6s and 7s in this round and despite my reservations, this is probably at the higher end of those, so I think I’ll stretch to 7/10.

Certainly a good nomination @GoatersLeftShin.