Joni Sings and Slings

Joni Mitchell is resurfacing and previewing her new album via the web:

For two weeks leading up to the release of Joni Mitchell’s new album, “Travelogue,” Nonesuch Records will be previewing one complete track a day from the album for 14 days as streamed audio over the internet.

Beginning November 6th at www.buzztone.com/joni, the concept allows the user to take a virtual journey through 14 of the 22 songs on the two-CD deluxe set, which features new recordings of songs spanning the artist’s entire career, accompanied by a 70-piece orchestra, a thirteen voice choir and a backing band that includes keyboardists Herbie Hancock and Billy Preston, saxophonist Wayne Shorter, drummer Brian Blade and others. “Travelogue” is being released by Nonesuch Records on November 19th.

Site placements, linked banner ads and e-mail blasts will begin on the 6th using the Buzzalong media player – a proprietary technology of Buzztone, a Los Angeles-based company – which functions as an e-mailable and postable mini-website. The day’s featured song will be highlighted, the next day’s song identified, and the user can return to the site at will to hear the music, view the album artwork (painted by Joni), read the lyrics, forward the info to a friend, sign-up for mailing lists, link to the Nonesuch and Joni Mitchell web sites and purchase the recording from an online retailer.

Spanning virtually the entire career of this seminal artist, Travelogue contains both well-known hits and hidden treasures from Joni Mitchell’s extraordinary body of work. Travelogue was produced by Joni Mitchell and Larry Klein, who also served as Musical Director and bass player on several tracks, with arrangements and conducting by Vince Mendoza. The album was recorded earlier this year at Sir George Martin’s Air Studios in London.

Sounds like a similar approach to what she took on her last album, Both Sides Now, which was also orchestral and included some rerecordings. This will be very interesting as she is a different singer now, her voice ravaged by 40 years of heavy smoking, she sounds more like Marianne Faithfull than her young self.

Mitchell is more outspoken now than ever before, as we noted here:

Veteran singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, disgusted with the music business, has said her latest album will also be her last.

“These are my last two records,” the influential Canadian songstress said of her forthcoming double album “Travelogue.”

“I’m quitting after this because the business has made itself so repugnant to me,” Mitchell, 59, was quoted as telling the December edition of W magazine in an interview.

Mitchell, whose eclectic career spans 35 years across the genres of folk, rock and jazz, has been hinting for weeks that she might end the recording career that made her one of the most respected and outspoken artists of her generation.

In an interview with Rolling Stone, published in October, Mitchell described the music business as a “cesspool,” saying she would never take another deal in the record business, “which means I may not record again.”

In the W magazine interview, she blasted the recording industry as “the most corrupt one of all. They try not to pay you whenever possible.”

Venting her scorn on contemporary artists — including Madonna — Mitchell said of music industry executives;

“They’re not looking for talent. They’re looking for a look and a willingness to cooperate. And a woman my age, no matter how well preserved, no longer has the look. And I’ve never had a willingness to cooperate.”

(from Reuters)

My prediction: she’ll be back either on her own label or via the Internet or maybe even on a major. She’s been making music for 50 years, she can’t stop now.