Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark
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Music CD Cover
Artist: Joni MitchellEdition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 1990-10-25
Music Label: Elektra / Wea
Accessories: Soundtracks:
- Court And Spark
- Help Me
- Free Man In Paris
- People's Parties
- The Same Situation
- Car On A Hill
- Down To You
- Just Like This Train
- Raised On Robbery
- Trouble Child
- Twisted
Free Music Notes for Court and Spark
Free Music Review: This girl is a woman now.
Hit: 5 Stars
"Court and Spark" marked the quantum leap for Joni Mitchell. The young introspective woman who turned inside herself so deftly on Blue suddenly opened up, both personally and musically. The hints of jazz that peaked through on For the Roses explode full force here, yet the key elements of Joni's sound are intact. She just sounds looser and more willing to play out on songs like "Help Me" (the commercial breakthrough) and the comical "Raised on Robbery."
More crucial to the development here is Mitchell's looking to others instead of herself as song subjects. The notorious "Free Man In Paris" was Joni translating label honcho and friend David Geffen's malaise with the music industry. The goofy desperate protagonist in "Raised on Robbery" hounds her mark at the bar until he's running away in fear. The musicians color in the spaces exquisitely, with Tom Scott leading the way. The muted trumpets and saxophones that pepper the album made "Court and Spark" one of the jazziest pop albums to yield top 40 singles. It is also, without question, one of the most important albums by a female artist.
The production was also vibrant. Choirs of voices sometimes arc out from the songs, adding an ethereal quality. The guest list - everyone from David Crosby, Graham Nash, Jose Feliciano and Cheech & Chong - fill in their cameos without overstating them. The merging of jazz and folk here was exquisitley produced, to this day it sounds fresh and exciting. She still had moments where the lady of the confessional canyon spoke up (the title track, "Trouble Child"), yet for the most part, Mitchell made "Court and Spark" the first major stylistic shift of an album in a career that is laced with them.
Court and Spark Poster
Painter-turned-folksinger Joni Mitchell had slipped stark saxophone solos into her prior album, For the Roses, and her singing had often hinted at a capacity for bluesier fare than her guitar- and piano-framed confessional ballads offered. None of those hints prepared fans for this sudden, expansive shift toward a much larger canvas--a sleeker, orchestrated pop style pulsing with jazz elements. Court & Spark found Mitchell casting aside her earth mother affectations and revealing herself as the thoroughly modern, thoroughly complicated woman she is; the songs sustained familiar preoccupations with relationships but replaced courtly settings and naturalistic imagery with recognizably modern locales. Deeply romantic, constantly questioning, classic tracks like the title song, "Help Me," "Free Man in Paris," "Same Situation," and "Raised on Robbery" display a more liberated Mitchell, ready to rumble with unbridled electric guitars (guest Robbie Robertson on "...Robbery"), even willing to poke fun at her own oh-so-sensitive rep with a hip cover of Annie Ross's hilarious "Twisted." --Sam SutherlandPop Music CDs
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