On "Amelia" from Mitchell's Hejira album, Hancock's keyboard flourishes dance around the haunting vocals of Luciana Souza. Tina Turner's vocal on "Edith And The Kingpin" likewise brings the jazz nightclub feel out of the song, as Wayne Shorter blows the tenor sax for all the world like it's last call at closing time. On the one track on this album which stands out like something of a sore thumb — and I don't mean that in a critical way — Leonard Cohen does a dramatic spoken word reading of Mitchell's "The Jungle Line" from the Hissing of Summer Lawns record, accompanied only by Hancock's solo piano.
But not all of the songs from River are actual Joni Mitchell compositions. One of the most compelling tracks here is "Nefertiti," which Hancock and Wayne Shorter first played on the original Miles Davis album which bore the same title. It was a song that is said to have inspired Joni Mitchell's "jazz period" in the late seventies. Here Hancock and Shorter stretch the song even further, reinventing it to sound the way they imagine that Mitchell herself might have first experienced it.
Joni herself shows up at her own party here to contribute the vocal part for her autobiographical song, "Tea Leaf Prophecy." As with the other Mitchell songs here, the song is reinterpeted the way it might be seen through a more traditional jazz set of lenses.
On River, the music being created, while in every way still a form of tribute to Joni, is all about creating colors and shades through improvisation. In many ways, some of Mitchell's best songs are given more room to breathe than they have been at any other time. This makes River, something of a perfect companion piece to Joni Mitchell's own recently released "comeback" album Shine.
Article comments
1 - Donald Gibson
As soon as I submitted my review of this album, I saw yours. I always find it fascinating how people can interpret albums in a myriad of ways.
I enjoyed reading this and I'm intrigued by your insight.
-Donald