Stuart Maconie Q, October 1998
Joni Mitchell, let’s see: born 1943, christened Roberta Joan Anderson, equine grande dame of American song, always enjoyed a glowing establishment consensus and so forth. Well, actually, not so. In 1975, Rolling Stone, in a fit of blather that makes Richard Littlejohn seem shrewd, denounced The Hissing of Summer Lawns – now routinely rated a classic – as the worst record of the year. In a music scene dominated by Lester Bangs, Lou Reed’s Rock’n’Roll Animal and the Tubes, only the bravest gave their vote to the angular bohemian hi-tech jazz balladry that’s dominated her oeuvre ever since.
The wing-collared shirts were out in force, though, to shower Grammys on her last album, Turbulent Indigo. Taming The Tiger finds her in better form. Jazz still exerts a shaping influence but there are other, less easily categorised forces at work. Witness the introduction to ‘Harlem in Havana’, where a reassuringly elegant tune emerges from dislocated noises.
Lyrically she’s as skilled as ever, although even Mitchell can make too many allusions to cafés, saxophones and raincoats. ‘Lead Balloon’s choicest couplet, ‘An angry man is just an angry man/But an angry woman/Bitch!’, is just the rueful side of hectoring. Moans about the music biz from insiders are rarely essential, but the title track is better than similar efforts as it correctly identifies the ‘whining white kids’ of modern American music. ‘Face Lift’, smouldering with righteous anger and sadness, finds a daughter telling a parent that ‘happiness is the best facelift’.
Top-flight chums abound – Wayne Shorter, ex-boyfriend Larry Klein etc. – but the sound has a pleasing unity, its most notable feature being attractive guitar washes à la Daniel Lanois and Vini Reilly framed in Mitchell’s unfathomable tunings as showcased in the pointlessly hidden instrumental ‘Tiger Bones’. She’s never sung better, either, the clear and precise enunciations now gone nicely husky so she sounds like Elvis Costello’s worldly older sister.
Mitchell continues to grow old without growing soft. This is tasteful and distinctive stuff, but clearly a bespoke product for grown-ups. A fifteen-year-old is as likely to possess it as they are a camelhair overcoat. Marketing men have to worry about that stuff. Joni Mitchell doesn’t.