Joni Mitchell
Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm

It is my desire to load onto this bandwagon of ours the few Mitchell releases still missing. Let's start with this 1988 album, thus right in the middle of the era of fake drums, FM keyboards, wrong reverbs (…and oversized jacket shoulder pads, greased quiffs, curly perms, and leggings…).

This eighties "ambaradan" somehow seeps into Mitchell's art, but not in a serious way. The record feels its time but, thank heavens, only just barely: the music here is substantial, enjoyable, and sometimes precious, only slightly bent to the aesthetic air of the time.

Joni is middle-aged (45), she long ago ceased to be the naïve and troubled girl wandering around Los Angeles with her unplayable guitar (because she tuned it however she liked), driving everyone wild. Here, she is a beautiful blonde lady with a typically Scandinavian jawline, in the midst of her marriage to her bassist and producer Larry Klein, which lasted a dozen years.

The "Sign in the Thunderstorm" is the Canadian singer’s most "socialized," "expanded" album par excellence. Scattered here and there you’ll find cameo appearances by illustrious, sometimes even unexpected colleagues: Peter Gabriel, Don Henley from the Eagles, Steve Stevens and his boss Billy Idol(!), Wayne Shorter of Weather Report, Tom Petty, Benjamin Orr of the Cars, Willie Nelson, Wendy and Lisa from Prince’s Revolution, Native American actor Iron Eyes Cody, Thomas Dolby.

The album is therefore very… "rich," spicy, with all these strong personalities contributing. Hubby Klein does a huge production job, putting all the tracks together, but above all organizing the recordings in a multitude of places. For example, they went out and recorded Gabriel at his own home in Bath, in the heart of England.

So, a very "structured" Mitchell, on this occasion. Not much guitar or piano from her: the tracks are layered, orchestrated, full; dominated by the powerful drumming of Manu Katché (when not covered by electronic drums, also fiddled with by Joni herself) and elegantly clad by Klein’s almost-Pastorius bass and Michael Landau’s resonant, flawless guitar, one of those guys who "…forget Clapton!…", if one is inclined to stir the pot once again.

By Mitchell standards, this is an album a bit too reworked, almost vain, to be considered among her best. Her ideal dimension is rightly another: more intimate, sparse, where that sublime voice, her plucking at impossibly tuned strings, and her harmonious piano approach have all the room to shine.

But if only there were more albums like this one… After all, she’s never made a poor record, and there’s plenty to savor here, too.