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61 of 66 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Ultimate Highway Journey Album, January 21, 2006
By 1976 Joni Mitchell was something of an American singer-songwriter legend, and with good reason. In the previous nine years she had released some of the most critically-acclaimed albums of the rock era, and was certainly the most prolific female singer in the world. Her popularity increased in the mid-Seventies, and peaked with the release of her No.2 hit album "Court And Spark," which received several Grammy nominations. The folk sound that had dominated so much of her earlier was gradually receding with each album, so that by 1976's "Hejira," she was making music that many people saw as being more jazz/blues, when in actually fact it was nothing like it. It was Joni, pure and simple.
Now I have been listening very intensely to Joni Mitchell's music in the past four weeks, and I have to say she is the most honest and truthful voice I've ever heard. As Q-Tip stated on Janet Jackson's 1997 Joni-samping hit Got Til' It's Gone, "Joni Mitchell never lies!" The passion in her delivery is unrivalled, her persistence, her determination to get her point across, the range in her voice, her lyrics suspend me in a state of disbelief when I really listen. This woman painted with her voice and words. Hejira is easily my favourite album by this legend, and definitely one of the best albums I've ever listened to. If there is one album you should take on a road trip, it's this one! I can just imagine driving down the long, straight roads that carry on for hundreds of miles in the middle of nowhere and having this album as my constant companion.
The album opens with "Coyote," probably the most upbeat song on the album. It's a perfect opener and quite positive in tone. The lyrics in this work so well and I love the way Joni weaves them all together in such an untraditional way. The percussion makes this song quite light and is a great way to easy yourself into the beauty to come. Joni's voice is beautiful and I love the way she sings, "He's got another woman down the hall and he seems to want me anyway!" The bass on this song is brilliant and the rhythm guitar works well as an underbelly to the percussion. "Amelia" is a song loosely based around Amelia Earhart, the female pilot who set off on a flight in July 1937 never to return or be found. Joni is compelled to sing about her after seeing six jet planes leaving vapor trails across the bleak terrain sky as she drives down the burning desert. The imagery on this song is absolutely stunning and the sparse guitar work opens it up to expansive proportions. I love the lyrics because Joni can gently lull the listener into a state of peace and tranquility, "And I slept on the strange pillows of my wanderlust. I dreamed of 747's, over geometric farms. Dreams, Amelia, dreams and false alarms." This song was the first one that really stood out when I listened to the album for the first time. I still adore it, but I don't think it's my favourite of the nine songs on the album.
"Furry Sings The Blues" is definitely a contender for my favourite song on the album. I'm not even sure if I'd want to put the songs in any sort of order because it just works so well as an overall piece of art. Yes, art! Music like this can be described as nothing but extreme, high art. This song features the legend Neil Young playing the harmonica flawlessly. He makes this song what it is, along with Joni's voice of course. The lyrics are melancholy and sparse, about an old man who sings the blues for anyone who will listen. The imagery created in this gives me chills. It's old and its dated in the way something gets finer with age. "Ghosts of the darktown society come right out of the bricks at me. Like it's a Saturday night, they're in their finery, dancing it up and making deals. Furry sings the blues. Why should I expect that old guy to give it to me true?" The harmonica outro peaks into the night sky, gently growing more distant. "A Strange Boy" has taken quite a while to grow on me but it features some of the most memorable lyrics from the whole album, such as, "We got high on travel, and we got drunk on alcohol." The lyrics are just amazing, I can hardly say anything more. She knows exactly where to come in with the next line, exactly which instruments to put more emphasis on so that the meaning of her words resonates more with the listener, everything, she's just amazing.
The title track, "Hejira," is next and is another superb song. This song features the beautiful tone of a clarinet that adds a dark melancholy to the song. It would be perfect for driving down the desert in the middle of a rainstorm as bleak clouds gather above. It's almost seven minutes long and has some really beautiful lyrics, such as, "I'm porous with travel fever, but you know I'm so glad to be on my own! Still sometimes the slightest touch of a stranger can set up trembling in my bones! I know, no one's gonna show me everything. We all come and go unknown. Each so deep and superficial, between the forceps and the stone." Joni's voice is beautiful as usual, although sometimes I find it a little bit whiny on this song. It's just her heartache coming through, and it works brilliantly, but sometimes it grates a little on me. "Song For Sharon" is the epic masterpiece of the album around which everything else orbits. It's almost nine minutes in length, and will keep your attention for every single second. The guitar work is superb and has this spiralling effect that appears out of the darkness frequently. It's one of the most evocative, powerful things I've ever heard on record and they come in at just the right moment to emphasise the beauty in Joni's lyrics, especially right after she exclaims, "But all I really wanna do, right now is find another lover!" Joni also has her own voice as background vocals in a high-pitched Indian-American yelp that yodels over and over in a beautiful rhythmic pattern.
"Black Crow" is another fantastic song but probably my least favourite on the whole album. That's not to say that I dislike it, because I love it, it's very powerful, but I considered the rest of the songs and they were all slightly better than this one. It's a rather short song at just over four minutes in comparison to most of the other six/seven minute ones on here. In this song Joni sings about feeling like a black crow flying in a blue sky as she drives down the highway. The song also opens brilliantly with the guitar being rather dirty and more rhythmic than anything else on here. Joni's voice is also incredible especially when she sings, "I feel like that black crow flying in a blue sky!" A great song, which is followed by the gentle "Blue Motel Room." The entire album is a road trip for Joni, and this song represents a part of the journey where she is staying in a motel for a night or two. This is the most jazzy song on the album, and it's absolutely beautiful. The bass of this song just puts me in another world, and the acoustic guitar is very old-fashioned. In other words, the kind of song Norah Jones would dream to have written and recorded. Around the second minute Joni's voice becomes distorted and you can sense a real depth and atmosphere in the song.
The album closes with the awesome "Refuge Of The Roads." This is probably my favourite song on the album. I've listened to it so many times and I am just in awe of the musicianship. I broke down in tears last week when I listened to this early one morning last week because I just thought it was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever experienced in my life thus far. Joni's voice is quite melancholy, and the lyrics are so evocative and vivid. I love it when she sings, "I pulled off into a forest, crickets clicking in the ferns. Like a wheel of fortune, I heard my fate turn, turn, turn." Horns are used to superb effect on this song especially towards the end. What really catches me is that this song is about the end of the journey, there's such a sense of completion, of sorrow and happiness all at once. It closes with one of the most beautiful lyrical verses I've heard: "In a highway service station, over the month of June, was a photograph of the earth, taken coming back from the moon. And you couldn't see a city on that marbled bowling ball, or a forest or a highway or, me here least of all. You couldn't see these coldwater restrooms, or this baggage overload, westbound and rolling, taking REFUGE in the roads."
OVERALL GRADE: 10/10
This album has blown me away, and it's nearly 30 years old. If music this old can do that to a young 18 year old like me, then it must be something special. How many people my age are into music like this? I'd like to bet not many. Joni Mitchell is a musical legend because of music like this and her legacy is preserved for eternity. As far as songwriters go, I don't think there's a better female in the history of music, which is why Joni is far and away the most important female artist of the 20th Century. It will be a sad, sad day when this woman dies but albums like this will be instantly set in stone for generations to come. I suggest you buy this now because you'll set off down that jet-black highway on your travels and never look back.
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20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Shine on your witness, taking refuge in the roads...", November 20, 2002
This album, released in 1976, is largely considered to be Joni's best. Joni alienated a lot of people with her previous album, 1975's "The Hissing of Summer Lawns." That album was lambasted by critics, leaving her very bitter. "Hejira" was very experimental but a bit more controlled. Here is a sound that is indigenous to Joni, you will never hear another album that sounds like this. The sound was described as being "as open and free as the Canadian prairies that spawned her." Joni herself says it has an "introspective, Buddhist quality." In late 1975, early 1976, Joni was driving alone from California to New York. Every time she stopped somewhere for the night, she would sit down and write a song. This is a song cycle about traveling, and the tales of the strange and not-so-strange people she met on the road, and also of different thoughts that came to mind. I'll tell you right now, you can sit down and listen to this album and appreciate the talent of the musicians, the beauty of Joni's lyrics, melodies, and arrangements, and the brilliance of her wild, out-there guitar tunings. But in order to really "get" this album, you have to travel a great distance along an unfamiliar route, by yourself, with this record playing. I've done this, and I can honestly say that I now appreciate the album on a great many levels. All of these thoughts really do come into your head. And I'll tell you, I lived parts of "Refuge of the Roads." Read along with the lyrics; I met a guy who drank and womanized but had some smart things to say. I also met a few drifters in a beach town (but I didn't wind up fixing dinner for them and Boston Jim). The title itself is pronounced hee-ZHEER-uh. It is an English word with Arabic roots meaning "leaving the dream no blame." Joni said that she was looking for a word that means the equivalent of "running away with honor." She joked "Exodus was taken, that belongs to Israel," and she found "hejira" while perusing the dictionary. And if you ask me, the album cover itself perfectly suits the album's content. Joni standing alone on an open stretch of land, cigarette in hand. It suits the introspective, solitary, brooding tone of the album. And the image of the road superimposed on her form means this to me: it seems to be Joni saying "You can say the miles I've traveled just by looking at me." Sorry to go on and on like this, but my love for this album knows no bounds. So in short, go buy it. Favorite tracks: "Coyote," "Amelia," "Hejira," "Refuge of the Raods."
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The BEST of the best...and that's saying something!, January 29, 1999
By the time of Hejira's release in November of 1976, Joni Mitchell had already established herself as one of the most gifted singers and composers in popular music. While "Blue" had validated her formidale reputation, each successive album -- For the Roses, Court & Spark, Miles of Ailes and The Hissing of Summer Lawns -- pushed Mitchell's star-maker machinery into high gear. She became what she ironically most feared: a bona fide celebrity whose only real peer, in an industry she mistrusted, was Bob Dylan. And so she fled. And, because of her consummate artistry in turning her life's ups & downs into music, she bestowed on us her finest work to date: the mournful, soulful, elegiac Hejira. This record, which is more than 20 years old, still remains as haunting and vivd as it did on the first listen. It remains her finest statement on the burden of being a successful woman without a family trying to quell the competing desires (in all of us) of the need for unbridled freedom and the beckoning of hearth and home. Hejira transports the listener to a bleak landscape peopled with crazy black crows, promiscuous coyotes, childhood girlfirends, Amelia Earheart, restless hitchhikers, blue motel rooms and one strange boy. With Hejira, Mitchell acheived what most songwriters hope to aspire to: a poignant musical piece which stands on it's own terms as masterful poetry. Even after the epic title track fades away, you can still feel those wheels turning...
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