Joni Mitchell: "Night Ride Home" Song by Song Thread

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Parachute Woman, Dec 29, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    I hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. I considered waiting until after New Year's to start up again, but I'm still on vacation and I've got plenty of time to start up a new thread. Today we begin discussion on Joni Mitchell's 1991 album Night Ride Home.

    Previous threads in this series
    Joni Mitchell: "Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm" Song by Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Dog Eat Dog" Song by Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Wild Things Run Fast" Song by Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Mingus" Song By Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" Song By Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Hejira" Song by Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" Song By Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Court and Spark" Song By Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "For the Roses" Song By Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Blue" Song By Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Ladies of the Canyon" Song By Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Clouds" Song By Song Thread
    Joni Mitchell: "Song to a Seagull" Song By Song Thread

    Night Ride Home
    [​IMG]

    Album Notes
    Released February 19, 1991

    Produced by Joni Mitchell and Larry Klein
    Mixed by Mike Shipley and Dan Marnien
    Engineered by Dan Marnien
    Additional Engineering by Tony Phillips, Steve Churchyard, Julie Last,
    "Two Grey Rooms" Engineered by Henry Lewy and Richard Cottrell
    "Night Ride Home" Mixed by Julie Last
    Assistant Engineers: Paula "Max" Garcia, Julie Last, Kristen Connelly, Jim Hill, Bob Voght
    Production Assistant: Paula "Max" Garcia

    Recorded and Mixed in The Kiva
    Additional Recording: A&M Studios, One on One Studiios
    Mastered by Bob Ludwig at Masterdisk

    David Baerwald, Karen Peris and Brenda Russell appear courtesy of A&M Records

    Special Thanks to: Bernardo Rubaja, Andy Brauer Studio Rentals, Gloria Boyce, Sigrine Vally, Spangles, El Café

    Management: Peter Asher Management Inc.
    Art Direction: Joni Mitchell and Glen Christensen
    Photography: © 1991 Joni Mitchell

    [​IMG]

    Night Ride Home is the 14th album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, released in 1991. It was the last of four albums she recorded for Geffen Records.

    Songs on the album include "Cherokee Louise" about a childhood friend who suffered sexual abuse, "The Windfall (Everything For Nothing)" about a maid who tried to sue Mitchell, and the retrospective single release "Come in from the Cold" about childhood and middle age. The title song "Night Ride Home" (originally titled "Fourth of July" and first performed during promotion for her previous album in 1988) was inspired by a moonlit night in Hawaii.[1] Though the album contained no charting singles, the track "Come in From the Cold" received airplay on AOR stations.

    This was Mitchell's first album not to be distributed by the WEA family of labels. She had been signed to WEA's Asylum and Reprise labels in the past, and Warner Bros. Records had been the distributor for Geffen Records from 1980 to 1990. That year, Geffen was sold to MCA Music (now Universal Music Group), as a result, the album was distributed by Uni Distribution Corp. (the distribution arm of MCA Music), which also took over the rest of the Geffen catalogue.

    A home video release, Come In From The Cold, was released the same year and features promo videos for five tracks from the album along with an interview with Mitchell discussing the inspiration behind them.

    As of December 2007, the album has sold 238,000 copies in the US to date.

    Contemporary Reviews
    "When I thought life had some meaning/ Then I thought I had some choice.../ And I made some value judgements/ In a self-important voice," Mitchell sings in one of her new numbers, perhaps speaking for a burned-out generation of angry activists and cynics: "All we ever wanted was to come in from the cold."

    Fans may well take this as an explanation-if not an apology-for the caustic, combative social commentary that characterized much of Mitchell's work over the last decade. But regardless of the intended allusion, the Mitchell of "Night Ride Home" is certainly a far sight more mellow than the agitated Mitchell of "Dog Eat Dog" and other '80s albums. She knows too much to ever again be the sweet lady of the canyon a counterculture adored, but this an agreeably peaceable, thawing out, characterized by hard-won warmth...

    With only about four players per song, the album is as stripped-down as Mitchell has gotten in a while: lush, smooth sailing of the sort that Joni fans who've been away awhile will love to come back to. What they'll find is an artist who has continued to grow in surprising ways-as opposed to fighting off getting old."
    Los Angeles Times, February 1991

    "While artists working in areas other than popular music habitually improve with age, rock stars have proved notoriously susceptible to burn-out. Wealth and middle age are clearly not conducive to increased work-rate, while we should not forget that a lot of them were remarkably talent-free to begin with.

    Not Joni Mitchell though, who is back after some uncertain years with NIGHT RIDE HOME, a disc which finds its author looking both backwards and forwards as she boldly addresses the problematical condition of maturity. The tone is immediately set with the title song, a 4th of July celebration in which present pleasure is carefully set against implied regret.

    "I must have a constant dissonance, even in my sunny chords, even in my minors," Mitchell has explained. Her acoustic guitar is always well to the fore here, picking out the contours of her off-centre songs in strange, glittering tunings.

    Some are more explicit than others. Slouching Toward Bethlehem, a musical reworking of Yeats' The Second Coming, doesn't begin to approximate the predestined menace of the original, despite obscure hints about the Gulf War.

    More effective is Cherokee Louise, where the oblique flashes of Mitchell's narrative are counterpoised by Wayne Shorter's saxophone. Best of all are Come In From The Cold and Two Grey Rooms, where Mitchell finds irresistibly bittersweet music against which to replay portions of a restless life. This is one of the three or four best albums she's ever made."
    The Guardian, February 1991

    "At the brilliant and accessible "Court and Spark," in 1974, fans wanted Joni Mitchell never to grow up. She was the illuminator of "sweetness in the dark," the trademark romantic boho whose lyrics were staples in post-adolescent journals. As she took flight from her raw, "Blue" emotionality and headed toward a more literary, less melodic style, her audience clung to her bygone image with the obstinacy with which they cling to their own youths.

    On the phone from Los Angeles, her adopted hometown, Mitchell explains that when fans ask her, " 'When you gonna make another "Blue"?' or 'When you gonna make another "Court and Spark"?' " her answer is simple: "I'll never make another. Those are ingenue works about things I'm not concerned with now." Happily married to bassist-producer Larry Klein, Mitchell says that "so many people out there have broken hearts that they want me to bleed for them. They want to keep me single and bleeding forever."

    And so, in the last 15 years, the Canadian-born Mitchell has become a pop pariah, rejected by an audience waiting for another "Help Me" or "Both Sides Now," which Judy Collins made into a Top 10 hit. They have been mystified by her pioneering explorations in jazz and Third World rhythms, now acceptable courtesy of Sting, Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon. Her politically confrontational lyrics, particularly on 1985's "Dog Eat Dog," were met with the sort of blunt hostility that greeted Dylan when he found God.

    "I was not a protester in the '60s," Mitchell says in a Canadian accent still strong after 25 years in the States. "I was a protester in the '80s, when no one was protesting. I felt it was a nasty job, you're reviewed as negative, but somebody had to do it because everyone was in the midst of their shallow, money-grubbing rah-rah."

    Now, in a surprising development, the tide has turned on Joni Mitchell once again. "Night Ride Home," her new album, has won a unanimously warm welcome from both critics and audiences (who made it No. 2 at both Boston's Tower Records and at all seven Newbury Comics, and No. 4 at the Strawberries chain during its first week of release). While not a carbon copy of her early '70s work, "Night Ride Home" is a listener-friendly work, favoring buoyant melodies and emotional frankness over gloom-and-doom social criticism.

    Mitchell views the acceptance of "Night Ride Home" in terms of musical modality. "The album is mainly variations on the key of C, a lot of C major. People like major chords - major chords are happy, positive chords. It's a very sunny modality, this album, and friendly. It's not that it's a smile button in any way, because there are moments of minor, where it's tragic reevaluation and yadda-yadda."

    She says she didn't try to concoct a crowd-pleaser - the "sunny modality" and nonconfrontational lyrics are simply a mirror of her own emotional state. After the "dissonance" and "heartlessness" of the '80s - not to mention some intense dental work - "only a positive sunny chord would do. I kind of stroked myself and wrote accordingly and found out other people needed the stroke of those warmer chords, too."
    Boston Globe, March 1991
     
  2. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Tags:
    @Planbee @Geee! @mark winstanley @All Down The Line @lightbulb @Squealy @VU Master @Socalguy @Dr. Pepper @Black Thumb @Sordel @qwerty @Newton John @Smiler @smilin ed @pbuzby @Comet01 @HenryFly @Fortysomething @bob_32_116 @maui jim @chrisblower @Damiano54 @gregorya @Ostinato @CybrKhatru

    And I open up discussion on the first track and the album as a whole:

    Track 1: "Night Ride Home"


    Night Ride Home
    Words & Music by Joni Mitchell
    © 1988 Crazy Crow Music BMI
    Joni Mitchell Guitar and Vocals
    Larry Klein Basses and Percussion
    Bill Dillon Pedal Steel Guitar
    Alex Acuna Percussion

    Lyrical Excerpt:
    Once in a while
    In a big blue moon
    There comes a night like this
    Like some surrealist
    Invented this 4th of July
    Night Ride Home

    Hula girls
    and caterpillar tractors in the sand
    The ukulele man
    The fireworks
    This 4th of July
    Night Ride Home

    Complete Lyrics at Joni Mitchell's Official Site

    Joni on this track:
    "Night Ride Home"
    There was a television show in England, an offshoot of Sesame Street designed to introduce a wide variety of music to children. It was called "The Ghost of Faffner Hall". Faffner Hall was an old house and the ghost was an old woman who'd obviously died. She had left her house to her nephew, who was an Oil Can Harry type character, complete with a thin, waxed mustache and a villainous and mercenary nature. As the new owner, he was intent on tearing down the house for personal profit.

    In this house lived an assortment of characters- the mad impresario, a ruddy-faced, blond puppet who loved a wide variety of music- from Beethoven to the musical saw. In the basement lived a couple of punk-rocker puppets and then, of course, you had the ghost who haunted the house. The show was a set-up to feature a variety of guests ranging from Dizzy Gillespie to opera singers, to me!

    They created an episode where the mad impresario gets a letter from an old sweetheart- Joni Mitchell- who is coming to visit him. The letter finds him as he is searching for the world's greatest sound. So he's banging on everything- listening to wooden sounds and metal sounds and glass sounds, with rapture. The scene between the impresario and me takes place in a pink Cadillac by moonlight.

    Prior to taping the show, we recorded "Night Ride Home" and we did it quickly, without the unnecessary pressure of mixing and remixing. Thank God we had that mix because one night, our second engineer accidentally put the machine into "record" when she was setting up the tones. It was the first track on the master and it got wiped out! It was the only track we had a mix on, so we got lucky.
     
  3. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Here's Joni performing (miming) "Night Ride Home" on the above described Ghost of Faffner Hall, complete with a romantic moonlit drive with a muppet. :D


    My thoughts...

    On the album Night Ride Home
    I've got a soft spot for this album, as it was the first of Joni's post-'70s albums I heard, and one of the first few Joni Mitchell albums I heard overall. My mom had a copy of the album in my parents' CD collection. When I got into Joni at age 16, I started with Blue and Court and Spark (as I've mentioned in those threads) and then this was the next step I took simply because it was there in my house. It sounded like an older Joni, of course, but I thought it sounded just as wonderful and human as those other two albums did. It became a part of my regular listening rotation when I was in high school, though this is definitely an album by (and possibly for) middle-aged people. I've always found this to be a really warm and intimate album from Joni. It features some larger themes about the world, as Joni had been writing about for years now, but it is all funneled through the lens of the personal the way the best of her early works were. She writes a lot about her own memories and life on this record and I've always loved when Joni does that. I think she is at her best when she writes about herself and presents those thoughts in a universally understandable way. I think that's why so many people have connected with her work over the years. She makes the very personal feel entirely relatable. Some of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs are on Night Ride Home.

    On the song 'Night Ride Home'
    Another great title track for a Joni Mitchell album. In fact, my favorite of her title tracks since 'Don Juan's Reckless Daughter' and maybe since 'Court and Spark.' It's a charming and lovely song with that instantly-recognizable-as-Joni guitar work (I could pick her guitar playing out of a lineup, and I think most fans could as well), the cricket-led heartbeat and the sweet lyrics about driving home on a warm July 4th evening with someone you love. I actually think it is one of Joni's very best love songs. No uncertainty, no pain--she loves the man beside her in the car without a doubt. It's an enchanting way to begin the album and I love the music video (not the muppet version! The real version!) as well. I think Joni was truly beautiful during the '90s, lovely in going into her 50s. I really love this one.

     
  4. All Down The Line

    All Down The Line The Under Asst East Coast White Label Promo Man

    Location:
    Australia
    I agree with you in that Joni is quite beguiling here at this age and with a new assuredness.
    The guitar tone really stands out and draws you in.
    Iam new to this and it seems Joni's words and syllables are mostly all closely released unlike her older recordings where she regularly plays with bars and meter, her tone is pleasant to hear though.
    Just my impressions from one listen.
     
    gregorya likes this.
  5. HenryFly

    HenryFly Forum Resident

    Location:
    Germany
    That video (admittedly out of context) is 'like some surrealist' decided he would 'punish' her for not taking part in the 'we all wear masks' themed 'Renaldo & Clara' by making her look far more ridiculous 15 years later. Was it Dylan under the latex?
    Great way to start one of my mid-table Joni albums btw with some fun! Glad you started the thread still in 2018 PW.
     
    Parachute Woman likes this.
  6. Fortysomething

    Fortysomething Forum Resident

    Location:
    Californ-i-a
    OMG! I had completely forgotten about this Muppet thing! But I do remember seeing it when it was out.

    I have a very soft spot in my heart for My Secret Place (as I blabbered on during last thread) and I can't quite compare the last album's opener to this one, but I do love this song!
     
    Parachute Woman likes this.
  7. Socalguy

    Socalguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA
    For me, Night Ride Home ranks as one of Joni’s 3 or 4 best albums.

    I listened to it daily for a solid month or more in the car on many long commutes. It’s one of her albums I still listen to regularly.

    She’s in such a good state of mind on this one. The mood is unhurried, relaxed. Her lower register voice exudes confidence and authority. The production is uncluttered and direct.

    The song “Night Ride Home” is absolutely magical. It has all the elements of what makes her such a great artist. The eccentric strumming, the gorgeous melody, the play on words (“overload”/“undertow”) ... She manages to capture the happiness, contentment and wonder she’s feeling during a random car ride along the Hawaiian shore at night with her husband. What a treasure she is.

     
    Last edited: Dec 30, 2018
  8. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Next up:

    Track 2: "Passion Play (When All the Slaves Are Free)"


    Passion Play
    (When All The Slaves Are Free)
    Words & Music by Joni Mitchell
    Joni Mitchell Acoustic Guitar and Vocals
    Larry Klein Basses and Percussion
    Bill Dillon Guitar
    Alex Acuna Percussion

    Lyrical Excerpt:
    Magdalene is trembling
    Like a washing on a line
    Trembling and gleaming
    Never before was a man so kind
    Never so redeeming

    Enter the multitudes
    In Exxon blue
    In radiation rose
    Ecstasy
    Now you tell me
    Who you gonna get to do the dirty work
    When all the slaves are free?
    (Who're you gonna get)

    Complete Lyrics at Joni Mitchell's Official Site

    Joni on the song:
    "Passion Play (When All The Slaves Are Free)"
    I always liked the Rabbi Jesus' spunk and his rebellious spirit. My father told me, "Your Jesus is awfully human." He also said my way of telling the story of Moses and the Burning Bush would be, to some people, blasphemous!

    This song is basically my telling of the Easter story but it morphs into contemporary ecological and sociological disasters. It is about crisis in the heart and healing of the heart. The "I" perspective that I am singing from is that of Zachius, the tax collector. He was short. He was jumping up and down in the back row of a large crowd that gathered to witness the arrival of Jesus into the town of Jerusalem. He had climbed into a sycamore tree to get a better look.
     
    HenryFly and mark winstanley like this.
  9. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Passion Play
    This is one of my favorite Joni Mitchell songs, somewhere in the top 30 perhaps. I touched a bit on this song way back in our Hejira thread, after @HenryFly pointed out the use of "passion play" in the lyrics of the song 'Coyote.' If you'll forgive me quoting myself, I wrote the following:

    "With passion plays being accounts of the passion of the Christ and final period of his life leading up to his crucifixion. Nowadays, we use the word 'passion' just to indicate very strong, intense, uncontrollable emotions but it comes from the Latin pati which means "to suffer." Vivid emotions can be painful. Joni paints a portrait here of all the excess, drugs and sex of the tour merely being masks and crutches everyone is using to get through a deeper kind of emotional suffering. Behind all these doors in the hotel, you can see all these different people (musicians, groupies, roadies, managers, etc.) all looking to get a fix of something to hide from their inner darkness.

    All that packed into just a phrase. Joni would later record a song called "Passion Play (When All the Slaves Are Free)" on 1991's Night Ride Home, which similarly uses the passion play and Christ imagery to tell a larger story of humanity suffering. In 'Coyote' it is personal, intimate suffering. In that later song, it is global suffering."

    The global suffering I alluded to is environmental degradation and the desecration of our world, which Joni weaves through the story of Christ's Crucifixion, drawing parallels (the suffering of a pure innocent). I find it lyrically fascinating and emotionally intense and I'm glad that Joni really wrote frankly about where she was going with the lyrics (writing from the perspective of Zachius, etc.) because it just makes me like the song even more. This is the kind of lyrical genius that so stuns me in Joni Mitchell's greatest work, and which seemed rubbed away in favor of blunt, obvious statements on the '80s albums. I'm so glad to hear her going for something more poetic and obtuse. I also just have a general interest in theology and Christ, which makes this all the more compelling for me.

    Musically, it is simple but melodically strong. I find that every song on Night Ride Home is deceptively memorable--she's never been a hook-writer (thank God) but these songs have melodies that linger long after you've listened.
     
  10. Socalguy

    Socalguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA
    PW, you nailed it (no pun intended) with “Passion Play”. It’s one of her most vivid, almost hypnotic songs. The melody kind of sneaks up and implants itself in your brain. Lyrically fascinating, near genius. I love the line “I am up a sycamore, looking through the leaves, a sinner of some position. “

    She’s in top form here.
     
    Geee! and Parachute Woman like this.
  11. wabrit

    wabrit from gardens where we feel secure

    Location:
    UK
    Two good songs to kick things off, but the repetitive cricket noise on the title track always seemed an odd choice; mechanical rather than organic, it seems at odds with the song.
     
    Planbee likes this.
  12. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    First time i have heard this song. It sounds like it could have come off Hejira. I really like it. It kind of sounds like Amelia's brother ... or sister .... I kind of like the idea of the crickets as percussion too. Fits with the night ride idea.
     
    Parachute Woman and Socalguy like this.
  13. mark winstanley

    mark winstanley Certified dinosaur, who likes physical product

    Another cool song ... It is like with the two songs here (that both are completely new to me) she has found a really nice middle ground between the early acoustic stuff, and the genre pushing jazz/type stuff.
    Thanks for the notification...
    Really good sounding album so far mate....
    Are you trying to financially cripple me :D
     
    Parachute Woman and Socalguy like this.
  14. WaterLemon

    WaterLemon Forum Resident

    Location:
    Massachusetts
    Wow, what a great (GREAT!) video clip. Thanks Socal
     
    Socalguy likes this.
  15. I will be a silent observer for a bit here while I feed on this record. I still haven't made thru. I will chime in in a day or two.
     
  16. misteranderson

    misteranderson Forum Resident

    Location:
    englewood, nj
    I have loved the song for years, thanks to live recordings. Really agree with (and couldn't add much to) socalguy's comments, so I won't.

    I'm just getting into the album. Picked it up this past summer.
     
    Socalguy likes this.
  17. Rfreeman

    Rfreeman Senior Member

    Location:
    Lawrenceville, NJ
    Best of her 80s albums and it would be reasonable to call it her best since Hejira, though I prefer Don Juan, Mingus and S&L.
     
  18. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Hope everyone is having some fun festivities this evening to ring in 2019. I just spent almost two hours making homemade potato soup, only for us to eat dinner in about fifteen minutes. :D

    Track 3: "Cherokee Louise"


    Cherokee Louise
    Words & Music by Joni Mitchell
    Joni Mitchell Guitar, keyboards, Vocals
    Larry Klein Basses and Percussion
    Wayne Shorter Soprano Sax
    Karen Peris Background Vocals
    Vinnie Colaiuta Snare Drum

    Lyrical Excerpt:
    Tuesday after school
    We put our pennies on the rails
    And when the train went by
    We were jumpin' round like fools
    Goin' "Look no heads or tails"
    Goin' "Look my lucky prize"

    She runs home to her foster dad
    He opens up a zipper
    And he yanks her to her knees
    Oh please be here please
    My friend
    Poor Cherokee Louise

    Complete Lyrics at Joni Mitchell's Official Site

    No comments from Joni on this one in the Geffen box set. She skipped a lot of the songs on Night Ride Home for commentary, unfortunately.
     
    gregorya likes this.
  19. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    Cherokee Louise
    Joni wrote quite a bit about her childhood on this album. Three songs were selected for the Songs of a Prairie Girl compilation (which covers songs about Canada and her youth): Cherokee Louise, Ray's Dad's Cadillac and Come in from the Cold. It seems Joni had reached that point in her life when she was in a reflection mood about her roots and where she came from, though she had touched on those themes throughout her career with songs like 'Let the Wind Carry Me' and 'Raised on Robbery.' Cherokee Louise is a bit of a heartbreaker of a song, and I selected some of the most painful lyrics for the excerpt. Joni sings about another of her childhood friends (like Sharon and Carol) but Louise is remembered for the pain she suffered--very real, very adult pain when the kids should have been allowed to just be kids. The melody is beautiful and I think Joni's voice on this track feels like it is full of sympathy for Louise. She doesn't go for the big, sad ballad, instead crafting a song with movement and curiosity in the arrangement, to reflect the children running and playing even as Louise hides this horrible truth. She tells the story with honesty and empathy, Wayne Shorter's sax providing that link of warmth back to the overall sound of the record. I love those lyrics about sticking your hands in dust piled so high it's like "bubble bath," even if that's kind of gross to think about. I think this is another stunning track.
     
    gregorya likes this.
  20. Squealy

    Squealy Forum Hall Of Fame

    Location:
    Vancouver
    This album has the strongest three song run to start a Joni album since Hejira or Don Juan's Reckless Daughter. And with "Come in From the Cold" added to that it felt like the best overall album since that time too, although I don't think the rest of it is as memorable as those four songs.

    I don't know whether someone convinced Joni or she decided herself (probably the latter -- who could make her do anything?) to put the acoustic guitar and piano back at the center of her music, but it was a relief after the previous three albums, and it didn't mean she had to retreat to an earlier style of writing. There's still a number of negative or pessimistic themes sadly but since the texture is warmer it's easier to appreciate and empathize with the songs.
     
    Old Mac and Parachute Woman like this.
  21. Socalguy

    Socalguy Forum Resident

    Location:
    CA
    Stunning is right. IMO, “Cherokee Louise” is one of the most touching, most heartbreakingly beautiful songs in Mitchell’s catalog. It’s right up there with “Little Green” and “Amelia”.

    The brilliance of this song almost defies description. Yes, it’s about a young girl who is sexually abused by her foster father. She runs away and the whole town is looking for her. She can’t be found... but her friend, young Joni, knows where she’s hiding. She’s hiding in a special place they hang out together. Joni brings her snacks and comic books to read. It’s really about their special friendship. “Oh please be here, please” Joni says to herself on the way.

    Holy cow. The song still gives me chills.

    The time signature is unusual - 6/8 or maybe 9/8 - but it doesn’t feel awkward at all because her phrasing is spot on.

    That’s three top tier songs in a row on this album. And more to come.
     
  22. Parachute Woman

    Parachute Woman Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    USA
    :righton: I think it's a combination of the production/arrangements with the style of songwriting that makes the songs easier to love. As you say, many of the songs still have quite sad themes, but Joni tells them through personal stories and vivid, poetic language, rather than the harsh finger-pointing and simplistic language of the songs on Dog Eat Dog. It makes a world of difference! I have no problem with melancholic music (in fact, a lot of what I listen to is melancholic!). I just don't want to listen to an angry person spewing bile. She's writing about serious things on Night Ride Home, but in a far more empathetic manner in my opinion.
     
  23. "Night Ride Home" indeed is a beautiful love song. Wonderful words in this one: Hula Girls, Ukulele man, & the image of a surrealist creating this moment add to its magic. I was completely unfamiliar with this and all the album until this last week.

    I happen to love the Muppet video!
     
    Parachute Woman likes this.
  24. "Passion Play (When All The Slaves Are Free)"
    As a Christ follower, the lyrics really pique my interest. I think her portrayal of Bible accounts is very reverent and thoughtful. Again, beautiful imagery. This is my favorite verse in word & delivery both:
    Oh climb down climb down he says to me
    From the middle of unrest
    They think his light is squandered
    But he sees a stray in the wilderness
    And I see how far I've wandered


    The arrangement is terrific in its sparsity; the synths color versus domineer as has happened in the past.

    I don't know how I feel about the response of "(Who you gonna get)" throughout...it's becoming a bit to cliche for JM
     
  25. "Cherokee Louise" makes my jaw drop! I don't know if one of her songs has accomplished that since Hejira, truth be told. Living in Saskatoon for years, I can picture perfectly the setting under the Broadway bridge linking the south downtown core to the artsy Broadway neighborhood.

    The music is hypnotic...Wayne Shorter & the guitar are haunting. Truly. But it's the lyrics which are so gut wrenching. The imagery of the finely sifted dust from the cars above like bubble bath foam! My gosh!

    I can't even articulate my thoughts without them sounding stupid. I can't believe I never heard this song until this week! It's already a top ten JM song for me.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine