This is one of those albums that, if you have an album by the artist, you own this one, and is much lauded as Mitchell’s masterwork. Quite often these read like a Greatest Hits, but I was surprised that only a few of the regular radio favourites are on here. No Big Yellow Taxi, no Clouds. But the tracks that *are* on here are finely polished little gems of raw emotion.
The arrangement is sparse, usually just Mitchell’s vocals (with her characteristic yodel) and acoustic guitar or piano. There’s a running theme of the transience of human relationships, not all romantic. Carey, for example, is about the kind of friendship that can be instantly rekindled after a long absence, while Little Green is a beautiful track about a child growing up, made even more heart-wrenching when you discover the Mitchell wrote it about a daughter that she had to give up for adoption when she was impoverished.
And I think it’s the fact that these songs are so raw and autobiographical that really sells them. You don’t need to know it to appreciate them, but it certainly adds depth. Carey is Cary Raditz, a flamboyant friend Mitchell made living in a hippy commune in Greece. Some songs are about her burgeoning relationship with James Taylor, himself no stranger to expository songs about his trials of life. Even here the transitory nature of relationships is touched upon, with the insecurity of separation in This Flight Tonight.
Some are about her breakup with Graham Nash. River is such a one. It’s always an odd feeling to encounter a “Christmas” tune on an otherwise non-seasonal album (like meeting Stop the Cavalry on Jonah Lewie’s Heart Skips Beat album). But although the lyrics mentions that “It’s coming on Christmas, they’re cutting down trees” and has the wintry and very Canadian image of a river frozen solid enough to "skate away on" (not to mention a downbeat version of Jingle Bells woven into the piano), it’s more about spoiling relationships – “I'm so hard to handle, I'm selfish and I'm sad” – in the kind of “I’m a difficult person to be with” lyrics that Adele and Taylor Swift specialize in.
For all of the wistfulness and sadness in the lyrics, this wasn’t, conversely, one of those albums that leaves you feeling depressed by the end of it. Rather, I think, it carries a note of hope, that connections remain between people even when they have parted ways, that joy and sadness are close companions and it’s the capacity to feel that makes us human. Mitchell’s ability to take heartbreak and turn it into an ethereal beauty shows a way of dealing with pain that acknowledges it, transforms it, and lets it go.
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