Joni mitchell the hissing of summer lawns free download

Indeed, Hissing was not as immediately or warmly embraced as its predecessor precisely because it veered far from such confections into the realms of jazz and the abstract.

These musical excursions would soon absorb Mitchell completely. The opening track is misleading lyrically as well. They make the album worth owning. Its sound is washed out and monodynamic. Hissing features some adventurous instrumentation, but on the CD it all sounds pretty much the same. The download also restores timbres, bass, and a modicum of dynamics. Instruments that are supposed to stand out, like a ride cymbal, finally do.

It's a "poppy snake" - in other words, the heroin that comes into the city via the trafficking routes that lead back to another humid, vine-thick jungle. To get deeper into the heart of darkness, Mitchell hitches the venue's wild clientele "cannibals of shuck and jive" not to a backdrop of jazz horns, but to pummelling Burundi drums and the electronic growl of a Moog. A totally new event on a Joni Mitchell record, "The Jungle Line" was conceptually provocative and years ahead of its time.

The primitive met the avant-garde in the ritual of after-hours safari, and everyone from Paul Simon to Adam Ant was galvanised by the rhythms.

But as the LP cover reminds us, to travel from jungle to city, the primitive must first pass through the suburbs. In isolation and affluence, the suburbanites scatter themselves like plush velvet cushions behind their gadgetry and emotional shields, while Mitchell, with penetrating eye and paintbrush, sees something slithering in their neatly mown gardens. How self-negating are the concessions, she seems to conclude, that yield and are yielded by these unhappy families.

Her "third-person lyrical portraits of damaged and unsympathetic characters," as Elvis Costello once called them, now begin to make their presence felt. They change the tone of the album completely, and with them disappear any realistic prospect of another singer-songwriter confessional. What exactly appears in its place - an air of cold detachment?

A sleight-of-hand elegance? An artistry so rarefied that some people don't react to it while others can't stop overdosing on it? For example: Edith, picked up last night by a crime boss, awakes in his bed with a song going through her mind.

The title eludes her, but her thoughts quickly turn to the man by her side. She won the contest to be his prize for the evening, beating off the competition of older girls, and the criminal empire he runs is not hers to question. She locks eyes with him across the pillow. As the song ends, Mitchell seems to suggest they're as amoral and desperate as each other: a perfect gangland match.

And that, sure enough, is one way of hearing "Edith And The Kingpin". But another way is to listen to the musicians — all of them, or as many as you can — who, far from being emotionally detached, bring sweetness and warmth flooding into the song from all corners. This way of hearing involves smiling with eyes closed as the trumpet on the left is joined by a flute on the right, and once they've held their notes for nine seconds, an electric piano "fresh lipstick glistening" plays a rippling trill so exquisite that a nearby electric guitar appears to sigh with bliss.

Another example: "Don't Interrupt The Sorrow", which follows, has often been described as a stream-of-consciousness jazz poem, making it sound like a text of abstruse intellectualism that only someone with a triple First in Classics and Oriental Languages would enjoy. Don't believe a word of it.

Cajoled along by Wilton Felder's inventively rubbery bassline, "Don't Interrupt The Sorrow" is a cavalcade of musical delights. Guitarist Larry Carlton's feather-light glides up and down his fretboard provide so many gorgeous moments that Mitchell stops singing and lets him form them into a solo. The Rolling Stone reviewer in who claimed that the album had "no tunes to speak of' evidently missed the wood for the trees; most of the songs are inundated with instrumental parts of aching loveliness, be it Chuck Findley's Bacharach-ian trumpet on the title track or his flugelhorn's haunting three-note refrain on "The Boho Dance", and their cumulative importance is as absolute as any vocal or lyric.

However, as Mitchell would learn, finding not a single tune on The Hissing Of Summer Lawns wasn't the most scathing accusation the critics in America would level. There are two more songs about suburban marriages in the album's second half, and at the end of each one the wife makes a pragmatic decision of sorts. In the title track, an unnamed woman lives as a virtual prisoner on her husband's hillside ranch "She patrols that fence of his to a Latin drum" , but chooses to stay because there's just enough value in their expensive home to compensate for the poverty of her dreary days.

As per Mitchell's album concept, the soothing hiss that the woman can hear from her balcony has worked its mesmeric effect. When it doesn't, the result comes as a shock. How old is the woman? Her age isn't specified. Old enough to be bored out of her mind with her husband, that's all we need to know. Old enough to be conscious of the moisturizing lotions and the march of time.

Mitchell, unmarried herself, lived behind wrought-iron gates in her s Bel Air mansion with her boyfriend and drummer, John Guerin. When the gatefold sleeve of Hissing The performances, were guided by the given compositional structures and the audibly inspired beauty of every player.

The whole unfolded like a mystery. But something went wrong. The verdict was not measured out in superlatives this time. With its jazz overtones and clear shift away from autobiographical writing, the LP left many fans disappointed.

Mitchell was touched when Prince listed it as one of his favorite albums in the 80s. Bjork, Morrissey, and George Michael all sung its praises. They judged it to be glamorous, but free from contrivance. The look is sometimes too polished. I couldn't live in a house like that.

Sacrificing emotions. It was a good job that nobody mentioned lawn sprinklers. Nash, D. Crosby, J. The performances were guided by the given compositional structures and the audibly inspired beauty of every player.

It is not my intention to unravel that mystery for anyone, but rather to offer some additional clues: "Centerpiece" is a Johnny Mandel-Jon Hendricks tune. Larry Poons seeded it and Bobby Neuwirth was midwife here, but the child filtered thru Genesis at Jackson Lake, Saskatchewan, is rebellious and mystical and insists that its conception was immaculate.

The photo is Norman Seeff's. She could see the blue pools in the squinting sun and hear the hissing of summer lawns All Lyrics reprinted with permission of the publishers. All Rights reserved. Express - Caribou Records.