Mitchell brings a more jazzy sensibility to this album, feeling a little like Laura Nyro at times. The songs are mainly piano-based, with her voice seeming to free-form up and down over the top, especially on the track The Same Situation, and on the final track Twisted. This is the only cover on the album, a witty track from the Fifties about going insane, and where Mitchell goes the most trad jazz of all.
Other times the jazz is more subtle, limited to the style of the vocals and laid-back piano. Raised On Robbery sounds at times like the Andrews Sisters, if the Andrews Sisters sang honky-tonk blues. Down To You starts off with sparse arrangement, just piano and voice and delightfully delicate, and then builds in strings, horns, even a bit of synth. It’s all about the dichotomy within a person - “You’re a brute, you’re an angel, you can crawl, you can fly too, it all comes down to you”.
And talking of lyrics, there’s a great one on Just Like A Train - “Thinking of the fun I’ll have watching your hairline recede, my vain darling”.
Unlike Blue, this one felt more from the head than the heart, and so wasn’t as deeply felt and moving; I think it’d take a couple of listens to truly appreciate many of the tracks, maybe listening with a less analytical ear - sometimes thinking about what I'm going to say in these posts can get in the way of the music, try as I do not to let it.
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