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100Joni Mitchell delivers a counter-intuitive, brilliant artistic response. [Oct 2007, p.90]
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Joni Mitchell's first album of (mostly) new material in nine years is reminiscent of a chapter from the singer-songwriter's past--not her famous, acoustic balladeering Blue period but her subsequent, jazzier albums.
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The songs are fairly compact and easy to follow. But they're far less easy to track and more interesting to live with than the work of most pop bards
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Musically it's imaginative, fresh, full of a more studied elegance and a leaner kind of pomp that we heard during her Geffen years.
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80A strange, intoxicating and unsettling album, idiosyncratic enough to make you glad Joni Mitchell put her retirement on hold.
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80Shine is built around her voice and guitar (or piano) and will appeal to fans who'd rather hear yet another rendition of a familiar fave than anything experimental, which is probably why we get 'Big Yellow Taxi' (2007).
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Best is the title track, a roll call of compassion that embraces the darkness of 'Frankenstein technologies' and the hope of "a safe place for kids to play/ bombs exploding half a mile away." Both sombre and defiant, it's Mitchell at her finest.
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80Joni Mitchell's first album of new material in nearly 10 years is a return to the form that made her a star.
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80Mitchell's songwriting shines brightest at such singularly poignant moments where specificity of images meets the vagaries of the instrumental arrangements, and, in the end, these and other highlights ('Bad Dreams,' 'Night of the Iguana') definitively carry the torch.
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80It's a weird record and a beautiful record and a record that tells some great stories, even if several of those stories are about a profound disappointment with this culture and this government.
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Coupled with other woodwinds, these horns sound elegant, almost classical. But too often the lead tenor veers dangerously deep into Grover Washington territory--such meandering (God forgive me if it's Wayne Shorter) damns otherwise lovely arrangements to elevator-music oblivion.
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70While the music always beckons, the words sometimes repel.
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Sparse arrangements enhance the material's mood and texture, which range from the chipper instrumental splashes that color a revision of her iconic 'Big Yellow Taxi' to the supple pulse that lends a meandering flow to the hopeful, grounded meditation of the title track.
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Subdued but not entirely resigned, Mitchell sings in a strong, assured voice that's still warm and welcoming, though lowered by decades of ecologically unhip tobacco smoke.
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60There's an elegiac beauty to these tracks. [Oct 2007, p.114]
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60The album's dense, electronically seasoned pop includes her catchiest tune in two decades.
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60It might not add up to vintage Joni, but her artistic integrity and sheer class are never in doubt. [Nov 2007, p.140]
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Her most nuanced new lyric details an apostate tour-bus driver's descent into a luscious sin she probably knows better than she lets on.
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60Shine is over-ripe with hokey Casio drum machines, soprano sax, and other things that nudge the tone towards easy listening.
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User score distribution:
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Positive: 10 out of 11
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Mixed: 0 out of 11
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Negative: 1 out of 11
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DaveL10Absolutely fantastic.
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roccoc9Amazing...and n° 9 is one of her most beautiful songs. I love you Joni!
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ChuckM.7