Call me a philistine, but Joni Mitchell’s voice makes my fillings rattle. Yes, I know, a lot of people consider her back catalogue to be an unimpeachable body of work; if I had a fiver for every person who rolled eyes at my heathen disbelief and recommended repeated dosages of Blue and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns to set me straight, I’d be one rich pilgrim. And yes, Ms. Mitchell is a gratifyingly waspish presence and an exemplary writer. But no matter how I try, I can’t seem to get with the Laurel Canyon programme.
A Tribute To should’ve been a godsend: a selection of Joni’s finest tunes, sung by a host of special guests. The reality, as one might guess from the diversity of the line-up, is a rather uneven record, and often a rather conservative one too. Sarah McLachlan’s ‘Blue’ sounds exactly as you’d expect, only worthier; Cassandra Wilson’s ‘For The Roses’ is helplessly ensnared in its author’s phrasing; Annie Lennox’s ‘Ladies Of The Canyon’ is perfectly pretty; James Taylor’s ‘River’ plain twee. So far, so-so.
Then the eccentrics arrive.
Sufjan Stevens ups the ante with an ambitiously ‘60s baroque pop Forever Changes take on ‘Free Man In Paris’ that boasts elaborate horn and string arrangements while keeping it low-key in the vocal department. Bjork’s ‘The Boho Dance’ is a gossamer thing, the pixie queen’s voice perfectly pitched against tinkertoy piano, backwards temporal-spatial slips and will o’ the wisp glimmerings. A wee beauty.
By contrast, Emmylou Harris’s take on ‘Magdalene Laundries’ invests the devastating lyric with barely contained ire and supernatural sorrow; kd lang’s ‘Help Me’ is exquisitely simple, an exercise in how to balance purity of expression with vocal virtuosity; Elvis Costello’s ‘Edit And The Kingpin’ investigates Mitchell’s Mingus fetish to fine effect, while Prince’s ‘A Case Of You’ is worth the price of admission alone (it helps that the guy has a vocal style distinctive enough to eclipse but not offend the original).