Product description
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The 1996 Grammy winner for best pop album, Joni Mitchell's
Turbulent Indigo is the singer's most distinctive and rewarding
work since Wild Things Run Fast in 1982. Coproduced by Mitchell
and her longtime collaborator and former husband Larry Klein,
Turbulent Indigo is perhaps the only one of her '80s and '90s
discs on which she isn't unduly hampered by studio technology.
Whereas her rotten taste in synthesizers lent an automatically
dated sound to 1988's Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm and 1998's
Taming the Tiger, here the gadgetry is unobtrusive and enhances
the power of Mitchell's voice and guitar playing. It also helps
that this batch of songs is particularly evocative and well
written, ranging from the graceful "How Do You Stop," on which
she wonders how to stop "love from slipping away," to the
wonderful vignette "Yvette in English," which describes a chance
encounter between Picasso and a reluctant model. Paintings and
painters are obviously a major theme on the disc--the cover is
Mitchell's portrait of herself in the guise of Van Gogh--but more
striking is her pessimistic view of humanity. "The Magdalene
Laundries" describes the e of girls left pregnant and
abandoned in convent laundry rooms, "Not to Blame" details "the
miseries made of love" for all the world's battered wives, and
the title of "Sex Kills" is entirely self-explanatory. "The Sire
of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song)," the album's finale, is nothing less
than the cries of the much-put-upon Job against a heartless God
who makes "everything I dread and everything I fear come true."
The plaintive beauty of the music helps sweeten the potential
sourness of Mitchell's lyrics. Indeed, the contrast gives great
force to Turbulent Indigo and confirms that Mitchell's
intellectual prowess and willfully contrary outlook are two
qualities sorely missing in the work of many of the contemporary
songwriters who cite her as their godhead. --Jason Anderson
.com
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The 1996 Grammy winner for best pop album, Joni Mitchell's
Turbulent Indigo is the singer's most distinctive and rewarding
work since Wild Things Run Fast in 1982. Coproduced by Mitchell
and her longtime collaborator and former husband Larry Klein,
Turbulent Indigo is perhaps the only one of her '80s and '90s
discs on which she isn't unduly hampered by studio technology.
Whereas her rotten taste in synthesizers lent an automatically
dated sound to 1988's Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm and 1998's
Taming the Tiger, here the gadgetry is unobtrusive and enhances
the power of Mitchell's voice and guitar playing. It also helps
that this batch of songs is particularly evocative and well
written, ranging from the graceful "How Do You Stop," on which
she wonders how to stop "love from slipping away," to the
wonderful vignette "Yvette in English," which describes a chance
encounter between Picasso and a reluctant model. Paintings and
painters are obviously a major theme on the disc--the cover is
Mitchell's portrait of herself in the guise of Van Gogh--but more
striking is her pessimistic view of humanity. "The Magdalene
Laundries" describes the e of girls left pregnant and
abandoned in convent laundry rooms, "Not to Blame" details "the
miseries made of love" for all the world's battered wives, and
the title of "Sex Kills" is entirely self-explanatory. "The Sire
of Sorrow (Job's Sad Song)," the album's finale, is nothing less
than the cries of the much-put-upon Job against a heartless God
who makes "everything I dread and everything I fear come true."
The plaintive beauty of the music helps sweeten the potential
sourness of Mitchell's lyrics. Indeed, the contrast gives great
force to Turbulent Indigo and confirms that Mitchell's
intellectual prowess and willfully contrary outlook are two
qualities sorely missing in the work of many of the contemporary
songwriters who cite her as their godhead. --Jason Anderson