Craft Recordings is thrilled to announce the first-ever vinyl
release of Joni Mitchell’s best-selling 2007 album, Shine. Available April 3rd,
and pressed on 180-gram vinyl at RTI, the acclaimed title includes such tracks
as “One Week Last Summer” (which received the 2008 GRAMMY® Award for Best
Instrumental Pop Performance), and an updated version of Mitchell’s iconic 1970
track “Big Yellow Taxi.”
The 19th studio album from Mitchell, Shine marked the
legendary Canadian singer-songwriter’s first collection of original material in
nearly a decade, and came as a welcome surprise to the artist’s fans, following
her well-publicized break with the music business at the turn of the
millennium. Described by Mitchell to be “as serious a work as I’ve ever done,”
Shine was inspired by the environmental, social and political turmoil which
plagued the era of the Iraq War.
The 10 tracks on the album echo Mitchell’s pensive
mood—reflective lyrics and beautiful, often-minimalist, piano-driven melodies
paint a somber, yet hopeful picture. Highlights include the instrumental
opener, “One Week Last Summer,” featuring the versatile multi-instrumentalist
Bob Sheppard on soprano saxophone; the epic “Night of the Iguana,” loosely
based on John Huston’s 1964 film; the title track, featuring an appearance by
longtime friend James Taylor on guitar; Mitchell’s revisit to “Big Yellow Taxi,”
which feels eerily prophetic 50 years after its debut, and “If I Had a Heart,”
which the New York Times described as “one of the most haunting melodies she
has ever written.”
The cover art on Shine is inspired by the 2007 ballet,
Dancing Joni: The Fiddle and the Drum, a collaborative effort between Mitchell
and choreographer Jean Grande-Maitre of the Alberta Ballet. The performance was
set to 13 of the singer-songwriter’s more provocative songs, and lit by a
backdrop of Mitchell’s artwork—specifically a series of photos she took of her
malfunctioning flat-screen television set (several of these images were
included in a triptych book on war, torture and revolution, and later featured
in art shows in Los Angeles and New York). The Fiddle and the Drum inspired
Mitchell to release her long-awaited new album. “The ballet brought everything
together—the poetry, the music, the artwork,” she says. “It was the thrill of
my life.” Three songs from the ballet (“If I Had a Heart,” “If” and the “Big
Yellow Taxi” redux) are included on Shine.
Upon its release, Shine received an enthusiastic critical
reception: the Chicago Sun-Times praised the album as “a welcome evolutionary
step,” adding that Mitchell offered “the most grace of her career thus far.”
American Songwriter called it a “somber, but non-sanctimonious masterpiece that
balances dark sorrow with orchestral exultation,” while the BBC declared Shine
“one hell of a comeback.” The commercial reaction was equally as positive,
proving Mitchell’s enduring prowess as a musical force: certified Gold by the
RIAA, Shine sold nearly 60,000 copies worldwide in its first week, and debuted
at number 14 on the Billboard Top 200, marking Mitchell’s highest US chart
position since her 1976 LP, Hejira.
Hailed as one of the most influential songwriters in musical
history, Joni Mitchell defined a generation in the late ’60s and ’70s with her
poetic, introspective lyrics and her genre-defying blend of folk, jazz and pop.
Born Roberta Joan Anderson in 1943, Mitchell began her career as a performer in
the mid-’60s Toronto folk scene, before relocating to the United States and
famously settling in Southern California. As her reputation grew on stage,
Mitchell was also becoming a hot commodity as a songwriter—many of her compositions
gaining success through other artists’ recordings, including Judy Collins’ 1968
cover of “Both Sides Now,” Fairport Convention’s rendition of “Eastern Rain”
and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s hit version of “Woodstock.”
Over the course of four decades, Joni Mitchell released more
than 20 albums, including such standouts as the deeply confessional,
groundbreaking Blue (1971), the double-platinum-selling pop record Court and
Spark (1974) and 1976’s jazz-oriented masterpiece, Hejira. Mitchell has won eight
GRAMMY® Awards and received a GRAMMY® Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002. She
was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1997 and was ranked ninth
in Rolling Stone’s 2015 “100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time” list.
No comments:
Post a Comment