Joni Mitchell - Hejira
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Free Music Notes for Hejira
Free Music Review: A true Masterwork unlike anything else...
Hit: 5 Stars
As an avid Joni Mitchell listener since 1980, I must admit that this album is my favourite for so many reasons. The first time I heard it, I was drawn to its music and lyrics immediately, intuitively, before I knew anything about the album's history or creative process. I've often referred to it as "my desert island album", with the title track actually being my favourite song of all time - it's not easy to pick something like that, as I listen to a great deal (and variety/genres) of music. The reasons I love this album are complex, not unlike the music itself. The lyrics are of course exceptional as always with Mitchell, but these have a particular quality of longing, melancholy, and wisdom that is somehow never heavy-handed or depressing...more insightful, or observational. The music is subtle, cyclical at times, and the resultant interplay is truly amazing. It's as though if one reads the lyrics they speak of music with this quality, and the music speaks of lyrics of this quality.
With this album, Mitchell once again also has the gift of capturing the times without ever sounding dated. Hejira was an appropriate title (sometimes technically referred to as Mohammed's flight from Mecca to Medina; but in this sense a broad but critical spiritual journey); as such this is the ultimate travel album, and listening to it is a spiritual journey. And "Album" is an appropriate word - like the photos of a trip, vignettes in our memory, experiences, thoughts, emotions they draw forth. I used to drive around 1200km every weekend through prairies to mountains and this was the soundtrack. As the years pass, each of the songs themselves have taken on special meaning and understanding at specific points of my life. I find it wonderful that there is so much positive feedback for Hejira at this point; it (and Hissing of Summer Lawns) wasn't as well received when released...people still wanted another Court and Spark - but every Joni Mitchell album is a new painting, she doesn't paint the same picture over and over, so they should have known better; critics without context.
Hejira is a true masterwork unlike anything else, and I sincerely believe it to be one of the great albums of the 20th Century. I struggle for comparisons to other's works, even Mitchell's. For me it has always sounded as poignant and fresh as the first time I heard it. You don't simply listen to this music; it washes through you, drifts around you but never lets go. It speaks with cohesion and depth to the witness of an important range of experiences, and I for one have been forever changed by it.
Free Music Review: Chillingly beautiful, a stunning acheivement
Hit: 5 Stars
I had listened to Joni Mitchell's first 6 albums many, many times before I bought Hejira. I loved it instantly, but after listening to it for a few weeks I began to realize what was really going on. Joni Mitchell is famous for her confessional-type ballads, songs that let us know exactly what she is feeling. This confessional style became more and more refined and embellished with each album she released. It finds its culmination in Hejira. In this album, Joni has perfected this style-she makes amazing, heart-on-sleeve music without sounding the least bit childish, pretentious, or arrogant. Contrast this album with her first (Song to a Seagull) or any of the early ones and you'll know what I mean.
The lyrics here are certaintly the best I've ever heard. They simply have to be heard to be believed. Joni's singing of them brings out their quality even more-her timing is impeccable as well as her choice of register and dynamic level. It's obvious from listeing to Hejira that Joni Mitchell is one of the most intelligent people in the world of music. Listening to Hejira in light of her previous albums makes this album a historical and revelatory experience as well as pure musical and lyrical euphoria. You can easily see how JM has developed as a person, a musician, and a lyricist when listening to her albums in sequence.
In Hejira, her emotions and life experiences are sometimes in a sense masked by the theme of the song (Furry Sings the Blues, Blue Motel Room), but there are many songs that are purely Joni Mitchell's insights and expressions of emotion. The latter type of songs is best represented by the title track (a hejira is a flight to escape danger). In this song, there's really no theme, it's just Joni musing on different aspects of her life experiences. You will not hear a more searingly personal or revealing song in your life. After hearing Hejira, I feel as if I've known Joni Mitchell all my life when in reality I've never met her and probably never will.
Before you listen to this album, get JM's previous 7 albums and become familiar with them. Then when you hear Hejira, you'll simply be left in a state of awe. I'm only 20, but I find it difficult to see how popular music can be any better than this.
Free Music Review: joni brilliance
Hit: 5 Stars
What I love about Joni Mitchell is the sound of her pretty voice, her complex storytelling lyrics that quite often deal with travelling to faraway places, and her absolute honesty. She wants you to *feel* the things she sings about.
I've often wondered if her music is directed more towards women or men. What's interesting is that it seems most of the time it's men who listen to Joni Mitchell, so I assume her music is intended for absolutely everyone.
Hejira happens to be one of her best albums. Now the FIRST time I heard this album I didn't think it was anything to write home about. At the time most of the songs to me felt overlong, some of them repeated too much (such as "Song for Sharon") and I just wasn't impressed because, at the time, I was too inexperienced to appreciate good, lyrically-dominated music. Well THAT has changed completely now.
Since I first heard this album (four years ago) just this afternoon, I gave it another shot while following along to the lyrics. I was blasting the album on my bedroom stereo as the sun shined through the window keeping me warm on this exceptionally cold winter, and it finally hit me that Hejira IS a masterpiece. The songs are NOT overlong, and Joni's ability to make her voice sail all over the place without going overboard is just fantastic. I love how the lyrics constantly deal with other places around America or around the world.
Actually I feel a lot of freedom in her music. A musician who isn't afraid to hold back her honest feelings on *any* subject she sings about, and really goes the extra mile to trigger an emotional response out of the listener by way of telling a really adventurous story.
So yeah, if you happen to be like me (or rather, my OLD self) and think most of these songs drag on for entirely too long, just follow along with them to a lyrics sheet and you will then probably find yourself caught up in her beautiful and distinct vocal style like I was this afternoon.
I guess "Amelia" is my favorite song but it's really hard to pick. I even find myself relating to some of these lyrics (and not in a positive way either, haha). Very good album.
Free Music Review: Flying under the radar but great.
Hit: 5 Stars
If "Blue" and "Court and Spark" were celebrations of being in love, "Hejira" explores the opposite end of the spectrum. Here we're invited to share Joni's focus on the theme of endless travel and the problems this lifestyle presents to a woman longing for a stable romantic relationship. The album kicks off with "Coyote" an FM radio hit of 1977 which didn't garner as much attention for this album as some of Joni's previous hits did for her earlier albums and was shamefully ommitted from her "Hits" collection. This is a pity because "Coyote" is an excellent tune and "Hejira" is easily one of her most complex alums of the '70s.
In "Hejira" the listener is treated to everything from rock offerings,"Coyote", "Black Crow", to Joni's staple folk songs, to old skool bluesy tunes, like "Blue Hotel" which is somewhat reminiscent of Billy Holiday. My personal favorite on this album is the haunting ballad, "Song For Sharon", which details Joni's endless search for love from youth to adult, both with humor, "There's a gypsy down on Bleecker street, I went to see her as a kind of joke. She lit a candle for my love luck and eighteen bucks went up in smoke," to reminscences of her youthful activities, "chasing white lace". The background vocals add an exotic flavor and intensity to the song's heartfelt lyrics. As always, Joni bares her soul in an intimacy that is almost alarming. "I can keep my cool at poker, but I'm a fool when love's at stake". This is an awesome album for those rainy days when you just want to feel bad, hug your knees to your chest, sip something comforting, and share that feeling with someone who's felt the same way.
This is perhaps my all time favorite Joni Mitchell album. Here her maturity and longing reach a crescendo previously unrevealed in her earlier work. I also enjoyed the travel and the images she evokes. I felt an immediacy with her as she takes the listener on a sad and endless journey with her from motel to motel to motel. But the picture she paints, (and she is a visual artist as well and you can tell from the songs on this album), is an unforgettable one. Great material here, timelessly presented. Five stars all the way.
Free Music Review: Startling, Different, Perfect
Hit: 5 Stars
Joni Mitchell gained icon status as a wide-eyed, folkstress in the late 1960s, composing music in unorthodox guitar tunings with lyrics so personal one could hardly believe their honesty.
After Blue, 1971, and to a degree on that album, Mitchell began a flirtation with jazz sounds: chord progressions, rhythmic modulations, vocal inflections. On For the Roses, she enlisted the aid of Tom Scott, who provided wind parts that hovered somewhere in the space between jazz and folk (two worlds hardly as disparate as most people believe) and followed it up with Court & Spark, a straight up (though no less powerful) jazz pop album. The Hissing of Summer Lawns hit audiences with a double whammy: a complete emersion in the jazz idiom coupled with tiger claw lyrics. Gone were her folksy introspections, replaced with a fiery priestess condeming much of the material world, the record business and relationships. Though brilliant, Hissing of Summer Lawns was a big bite for a great deal of listeners.
In the wake of Summer Lawns, she brought forth Hejira, a fusion of Joni's folk roots, jazz experimentations and powerful, poetic lyrics. A glance at the lyrics themselves reveals long, twisting lines with heavy syllabic counts. They are hardly musical. However, Joni matches the cumbersome lyrics with sparse instrumentation, full of vertical space, and melodies that accentuate the formlessness of the lyrics.
This album is startling, different, and absolutely perfect.
Themes are pretty standard: failed relationships, new relationships, travel, family, friends, and of course, Joni's incessant struggle between traditional women's archetypes and her own 'wanderlust' and stardom.
I listen to this album track by track. Each one reveals itself differently, and each is uniquely powerful.
Fans of Joni, Jazz, Jaco will LOVE this. Probably not for the novice though.