Shine

iTunes Review

Joni Mitchell’s 2007 return to the music industry after nearly a decade’s sabbatical finds her pretty much where she left off. Her jazz-tinged, idiosyncratic pop, piano meets saxophone and melodic electric bass, remains unpredictable in its compositional structure and her lyrics are mostly pointedly opinionated from the anti-war “Strong and Wrong” to the environmental concerns of “This Place” and the personal empowerment of “If.” She begins with the instrumental “One Week Last Summer,” as if to slowly immerse herself and to playfully tease her audience with a little anticipatory tension. However, she breaks her silence within the first thirty seconds of “This Place,” her voice in fine form, considering its darkening over the years, contemplating the aesthetic ugliness she finds around her. “If I Had a Heart” confronts the difficulties of reconciling one’s personal dreams and desires with the realities of human nature and a world of money. The 2007 update of “Big Yellow Taxi” replaces Mitchell’s initial warning with the resigned sound of factual truth. “Shine” wishes for genuine love and compassion to replace the platitudes and hate behind so many political messages. But more than her literal words, Mitchell offers beauty in the form of weightless rhythms and pastoral instrumental passages that perform like mist over a field.