Joni goes back to basics… and 1963
Gay Joni Mitchell fans are legion. Stands to reason. Why wouldn’t we love the best singer/songwriter of all time, male or female? No reason in the world that we can think of (oh and argue that one out among yourselves if you like, we’re standing by it).
And that legion will know that it’s not often that we have new, never-before-heard Joni tracks to look forward to: it can take 20 years! So how do you feel about six hours of unreleased material? Excited right? Especially when some of the songs involved have literally never been heard outside of Ms. Mitchell’s back bedroom (we hear it’s very nice: lots of paintings and fabrics).
The project is Joni Mitchell Archives – Vol 1: The Early Years (1963-1967) and is a mix of very hippyish, very simple original songs and covers (it kicks off with a pared back voice-and-guitar version of The Animals’ House of the Rising Sun, for instance) leading into live performances and radio performances that take us up to songs from the first album Joni Mitchell/Song to a Seagull.
The voice is as delicate as a dandelion clock, maybe too flute-y for some, but if you’re a die-hard or you like the Blue album (the voice, which changes over the years, is similar to how it sounds on that best-known collection) or you like singers like Judy Collins, who was ploughing the same furrow around this time with similar folky songs and murder ballads, then you really should get stuck in.
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