Joni Mitchell
Ladies Of The Canyon

THE REVIEW

Joni Mitchell emerged in the music world as a true and captivating oddity: not only for being one of the few true singer-songwriters of those years but above all for her unique style, an artistic folk, refined and very distinctive. This Canadian girl, musician, painter, and poetess by vocation, tenacious, strong and tempered by life, is truly an artist for whom terms like influential, seminal, and experimental can be used with justification and without the risk of hyperbole: always in a continuous musical exploration, never static, never fitting into a precise genre. Her journey begins with the early albums, "Song To A Seagull" from 1968 and "Clouds" the following year, and the music world immediately takes notice of her: the established Judy Collins successfully interprets "Both Sides Now," a young and emerging Jennifer Warnes makes "Chelsea Morning" her own. The style of these early albums is perhaps still a bit immature and occasionally challenging, but Joni demonstrates from the start her ability to write captivating and hypnotic melodies, with an entirely personal taste, especially in "The Pirate Of Penance" and "Roses Blue."

So we arrive at 1970: "Blue" is now on the horizon, and the album that precedes it, defining its coordinates, is "Ladies Of The Canyon," which is also the album of the singer-songwriter's full maturation. Despite many points of contact between these two records, there are notable differences as well: "Blue" is a simple, direct, instinctive, brilliant album that immediately circulates; "Ladies Of The Canyon" is not; it requires more time, patience, and attention: it is intimate, reflective, the emotions are more rarefied and "savored" compared to its highly acclaimed successor, which, however, it has absolutely nothing to envy in terms of overall quality: not that "Ladies Of The Canyon" lacks light and fun episodes, just think of the very rhythmic "Big Yellow Taxi", full of cheerfulness and irony but also important environmental messages, or a real, wonderful gem like "Morning Morgantown", almost a musical transposition of the pictorial art so dear to the Canadian artist, where the brush is Joni's sweet and charming voice, the two main instruments of the album, piano and acoustic guitar intertwine forming the canvas and the final result is a delicate and dreamy fresco; a song like the energetic and urgent "Conversation" at first listen seems almost a draft of what will be "Carey" and "California," but by paying more attention, one realizes that, for its instinctive, spontaneous, and torrential songwriting style, for the colloquial style it is much closer to "The Last Time I Saw Richard," of which it is almost a lively and rhythmic alter ego. However, the core of the album is made up of reflective, autumnal ballads, beautifully designed by the piano, sometimes imbued with sweetness, such as "Willy" and "For Free" or darker and more restless, "Rainy Night House", "Blue Boy", and "The Priest", hypnotic, ambiguous and shadowy.

Many episodes of the album are true demonstrations of what Joni Mitchell is capable of doing with her voice: a voice that I define as the most human and earthly there can be: it is extraordinary, mutable, capable of embodying infinite states of mind, thus far from a banal, cloying, and stereotypical angelic voice; angelic voices, in 90% of cases, are mere frauds and diversions: Joni Mitchell is not an angel: she is a real Woman, in flesh and bone, a Woman born with the gift of being able to transform her feelings into art, using just as much the brush to paint, as the pen to write her lyrics, as her voice to sing. Her hypnotic tone and her elegant vocalizations give the title track "Ladies Of The Canyon" an indefinable, airy, subtle, almost mysterious atmosphere: a transposition into music of the most intimate and profound female essence; in "The Arrangement", a sort of invective against superficiality becomes sharp as a knife, reaching almost lyrical tones in a bitter and tormented climax, well supported by the piano, and in the mysterious, allegorical, and intriguing "Woodstock", where the electric piano makes its appearance, her choirs are essential to create an almost imperious cadence, as indefinable and fascinating as the song of the sirens.

As the final seal, as the last and definitive theatrical coup, comes finally the song most strictly definable as folk from "Ladies Of The Canyon," namely "The Circle Game": imbued with serenity and velvety lightness, accompanied only by acoustic guitar and backup choirs in the chorus, giving it an even more bucolic and contemplative flavor, this song is a beautiful poem sweetly set to music; perfect for closing in the best possible way the first great masterpiece of this singer-songwriter, an artist who with her music has always adopted a very "pictorial" approach: figurative, instinctive, direct, improvised, one perceives this constantly in "Ladies Of The Canyon" despite the extreme care and refinement of the sounds and style: Joni Mitchell is truly an artist through and through, born with art in her blood, who lives and breathes it in all its forms in a pure, honest, personal manner: in my opinion, this is the essence of Joni Mitchell's charm, an essence that in albums like "Ladies Of The Canyon" has expressed itself in all its fullness.