Night Ride Home

I pondered for many months whether to review Joni's follow-up, Night Ride Home. I've played it many, many times...and sonically it's a wonderful follow-up to Chalkmark In A Rainstorm, stripped down and simple. The distinctive drums are gone, the synths are gone, it's mostly just Joni on guitar and then-husband Larry Klein on bass with session help once in a while.

Joni Mitchell Night Ride Home

Joni Mitchell: Night Ride Home

Unfortunately, I feel that there are only three tracks that are of real import:

Joni Mitchell: Night Ride Home

Night Ride Home...provides sumptuous images of a Summer's evening, shared with someone you're in love with:

"...Once in a while in a big blue moon, there comes a night like this...like some surrealist invented this...4th of July Night Ride Home..."

lyrics delivered in a musical sway that's wonderfully sensual

"...I love the man beside me, we love the open road. No phones till Friday, far from the overkill, far from the overload..."

Cherokee Louise...a chilling story from her youth about her sexually abused friend who's on the run showing Joni at her journalistic best!

"...She runs home to her foster dad, he opens up his zipper and he yanks her to her knees...now please be here, please...my friend, Cherokee Louise..."

In the song, young Joni's sure Cherokee Louise is at their kids' hide-out and goes to find her but the words change from prose to lyric:

"...Cherokee Louise is hiding in this tunnel
In the Broadway bridge
We're crawling on our knees
We've got Archie and Silver Screen
I know where she is

The place where you can stand
And press your hand like it was bubble-bath
In dust piled high as me
Down under the street
My friend
Poor Cherokee Louise..."

Joni Mitchell on Cherokee Louise:

"...I was feeling sorry for myself one night. And suddenly - I was saying look at this injustice after injustice after injustice...and I suddenly remembered Cherokee Louise - which is a fictional name but there's a real person - what had happened to her and I thought:"...oh, gee, you know, here's a greater, you know, miscarriage of justice, that she was sent to prison because no-one would take her in and because she was an Indian and because this man had molested her. Through no fault of her own, this innocent child was sent to prison." The song doesn't even cover that..." Night Ride Home special 2001

...and Ray's Dad's Cadillac...naughty memories from the 50s (or early 60s) and again, a gentle but sexy swing that I find irresistable:

"...Ray's Dad's Cadillac, weekends we get...Ray's Dad's Cadillac...Rock'n'Roll in the dashboard, romance in the back of it, Ray's Dad's Cadillac..."

And the rest...well, it certainly wouldn't be fair to say they leave me cold, because they don't, not in the slightest...However, they don't move me and mostly feel like very pleasant filler. Now, three terrific tracks and a few pleasant fillers may be fine for you. For Heaven's sake, I've certainly really liked albums with only one good track...but I feel that it would be untrue of me to suggest that Night Ride Home is anything more, especially from an artist of Joni Mitchell's stature.

Take, for example, the single How Do You Stop (see video), which is absolutely lovely but doesn't move me. It would be a wonderful song, perhaps even a career's best for a lesser artist such as Carly Simon but for Joni, it's just nice and more than a little bit sexy.

Come In From The Cold, as well, is an ambitious attempt to contrast her puritanical 1950s upbringing with the hopes of the 1960s, tempered by the commercial exploitation of her Art in the 1970s, looked at in the cold light of the 1990s, while knowing that love was all she ever wanted. I get it, I like it, I just don't love it.

Similarly, Two Grey Rooms, about glimpsing an ex-lover, a song which moves a number of the Amazon reviewers, does little for me, nor for that matter, the apocalyptic Slouching Towards Bethlehem.

Don't get me wrong, I do recommend you purchase Night Ride Home...I genuinely like the sounds...but I can't fully recommend the quality of all the songwriting. Does it matter? Probably not...to most people...though it does to me. This is very much a chill album and as far as I'm concerned, there ain't nuthin' wrong with that. Just don't expect sustained excellence and you'll be greatly rewarded.

Joni Mitchell: Night Ride Home

"...I have had this CD for some 15 years and consider this one of my favorite CDs of all time..." Amazon reviewer B.K. McLean

"...It's an album filled with smart lyrics and clever thoughts. The music has a very unusual quality to it, as it is lush-sounding yet rarely strays far from its basic acoustic-guitar driven pulse. That's what it is! This album has a pulse to it..." Amazon reviewer RichReactions

"...This album is fabulous!...It starts off with the sound of crickets, leads you through one multi-layered, full musical experience after another, and her new lower, rougher, but still expressive voice rocks you in a cradle of carefully written lyrics..." Amazon reviewer bethtexas

"...Take a singular artist who became known for her gossamer voice, throw in a few decades and a couple thousand cartons of cigarettes and what do you end up with? Simply one of the most gorgeous CDs in her collection. It is wonderful to hear Joni's voice now, it is so different than back in the '70s... but it is definitely the same compelling, masterful instrument..." Amazon reviewer K.Parsons

"...Let's not forget, among the accolades for her songs, that Joni Mitchell really invented a new way to play the guitar with her use of exotic tunings and her signature playing style...With her guitar is mixed right out front on NRH, you realize just what a singular musician she is..." Amazon reviewer montysano