A Tribute To Joni Mitchell 
Category: Entertainment > Music
Good
33
The project was started in the late Nineties but was never completed.
In 2004, the executive producer and Nonesuch Records President Bob Hurwitz came across the unfinished album and resuscitated the project.
Twelve very different performers cover some of her best-known numbers, in a dazzling variety of styles: Björk beguiles in her slow, breathy ickle-girl version of "The Boho Dance", Prince wails seductively through "A Case of You", Caetano Veloso gives "Dreamland" a Brazilian swing, Elvis Costello chews at the tragedy of "Edith and the Kingpin", kd lang epitomises the elegant and witty chanteuse in "Help Me".
Such a range of big names - Emmylou Harris, Brad Mehldau and Annie Lennox are among the other contributors - suggests the extraordinary breadth and depth of influence that Joni's work has exerted since the release of Ladies of the Canyon in 1970.
Somehow, their efforts fail to cohere.
It's partly the choice of songs: an avoidance of the obvious early hits and a desire to emulate the sophisticated eclecticism of Mitchell's later recordings, which often simply dissipates the subtle sophistication of the original melodies.
The best moments bring the individual artists' trademarks to the songs: Caetano Veloso's "Dreamland" has a festival tristesse; Sarah McLachlan's layered, acoustic "Blue sucks the air from a room", James Taylor's homesick "River" aches with his neighbourly sincerity, Emmylou Harris's "The Magdalene Sisters" blows her own desert dust into Mitchell's laundry lyrics, while "Don't Interrupt the Sorrow" finds jazz pianist Brad Mehldau in Keith Jarrett mode, cycling ostinatos forming a bed for more inquisitive explorations.
Cassandra Wilson's "For the Roses" - one of the few covers for which Mitchell herself has expressed admiration - is sung in a rich and sultry dusk that blows the fading petals of those lovely lines into a warm wind of bass and harmonica: gorgeous, classy and true.
If you like Joni's music and you want to make comparisos, you will be disappointed.
Please, do not compare !
Listen to this record just as a new album paying homage to one of the greatest singer-songwriters of our time.
34
"A Tribute to Joni Mitchell" is the first major US tribute album to the legendary artist. Musicians from many genres are represented on the 12 tracks of both rare and quintessential songs from the revered and influential singer/songwriter's expansive career.
Assembled and performed with a little love and care, a tribute album can make perfect sense.
However, covering Joni Mitchell, the mistress of the complex and the understated, is no easy task and here Elvis Costello bellows his way through "Edith and the Kingpin", James Taylor drowns in "River", and Björk is reliably ghastly on "Boho Dance".
However, there are delights which add to Mitchell's originals.
Brazilian icon Caetano Veloso transforms "Dreamland" into a delicate samba, Annie Lennox handles "Ladies of the Canyon" with surprising authority, Sufjan Stevens unlocks "Free Man in Paris" and, best of all, Emmylou Harris manages to be both angry and gossipy on "Magdalena Laundries".
Far from pointless.
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Bad
21
This disc is not very interesting. The performances are mostly lackluster. The only stand out tracks are Annie Lennox's brilliant reading of Ladies of the Canyon. Lennox has a wonderfully distinctive voice and the synthesizers and Indian instrumentation reminded me plesantly of the Beatles. k. d. lang does a wonderful job on Help Me and James Taylor does a good job on River but I already had that on his holiday release. It was sort of interesting to hear Prince but the rest of the disc is just plain boring.
22
This is no "Return Of The Grevious Angel". Sadly they use admirers of Joni Mitchell's music instead of artists who would really know how to make some decent renditions. This CD is good for about three listens before it ends up collecting dust in the music rack. James Taylor and Sarah Mclachlan fit for Joni's style (Folk, Jazz & World) and that is about it. Who should be here? Pat Metheny, Shawn Colvin, C.S.N.& Y., Jackson Browne, Judy Collins, David Wilcox, Richard Thompson, Arlo Guthrie, O'2L, Steely Dan, John Gorka, Carly Simon, Laura Coyle, Robben Ford and Loreena McKennitt. Maybe even Rickie Lee Jones and Joni could kiss and make peace. Let's try a second tribute and get this right. The booklet by the way is joke. A 2 Star only for Sarah Mclachlan's "Blue". Avoid unless you're one of those collectors from A to Z on Joni Mitchell. She deserved way better than this. Save your $$$$ and read the other honest reviews which I didn't.
15
This tribute was announced almost ten years ago, and it seems to have undergone a transformation since then. To be fair, there are some interesting additions such as the Sufjan Stevens and Brad Mehldau tracks. And Emmylou Harris is brilliant. But Sarah McLachlan's "Blue" has been heard before as has Prince's "A Case of You." Earlier reports indicated contributions from heaviweights like Steely Dan and Lindsey Buckingham. I sure would like to have heard what they would have done. Even more disappointing is that Joni's Hejira-Mingus era albums are mostly ignored - and that was her best music, in my opinion. As a final indignity, it sounds to me that too much compression was added in the mastering phase, and hence the overall sound quality of the CD is lacking in dynamics.
