Joni Mitchell / Shine – CD

Author: MITCHELL,JONI

Format: Remixes included

Release Date: 25-09-2007

Details: Amazon.ca Shine may ultimately register as a “fans only” milestone, but it proves that Joni Mitchell retains many of the storied calling cards of her best albums. The searing lyricism of 1971’s Blue and the penchant for self-redefinition hailed by 1974’s Court and Spark make cameos here, but sadly, lesser efforts’ drawbacks abound. True, “Big Yellow Taxi” reprises the environmental dystopia Mitchell first poeticized on 1970’s Ladies of the Canyon, but the occasion only prompts new pedantic effrontery (“This Place,” “If I Had a Heart”). In this regard, Shine’s especially cloying title track marks the worst offender. Blissfully, though, “Hana” boasts a driving rhythm section and blurting squirts of electric guitar and saxophone in support of a compelling character sketch, and “If”–based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem of the same nam