Joni Mitchell - Painting with Words and Music
by Joan Tosoni

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Movie Reviews of Joni Mitchell - Painting with Words and Music

Movie Review: Great musicians, greater music, fantastic performance
Summary: 5 Stars

Summary of Joni Mitchell - Painting with Words and Music

Track Listing:
1. Tiger Bones
2. Big Yellow Taxi
3. Just Like This Train
4. Night Ride Home
5. Crazy Cries Of Love
6. Harry's House
7. Black Crow
8. Amelia
9. Hejira
10. Sex Kills
11. The Magdalene Laundries
12. Moon At The Window
13. Face Lift
14. Why Do Fools Fall In Love?
15. Trouble Man
16. Nothing Can Be Done
17. Song For Sharon
18. Woodstock
19. Dreamland

This 1998 concert special sheds welcome light on the work from that post-Spark quarter century, its 22 songs dominated by the confessional works that have remained Mitchell's strong suit. Early favorites like "Big Yellow Taxi" and "Just Like This Train" retain their charm, but it's Mitchell's more mature pieces such as "Amelia" (from Hejira) and "Sex Kills" (from Turbulent Indigo) that convey the depth and acuity of her work. A superb band--including Brian Blade, Mark Isham, Larry Klein, and Greg Leisz--provides a sinewy, sympathetic framework well-suited to the palette of jazz, folk, and pop colors that Mitchell daubs on her songs. Adding further intimacy to the performance is a circular stage design, a small audience, and a welcome lack of "big" production effects; instead, Mitchell indulges her second career as a painter through a pre-show stroll around a gallery of her visual works.

Mitchell's frail health in the late '90s, as well as a lifetime of cigarettes, has taken a toll on her voice, which has lost much of its upper register. Yet there's also an added richness to her lower range befitting this sharp-eyed survivor's art. Old fans will also recognize the flurries of girlish laughter in between-songs patter, while savoring how Mitchell's powers as a writer and player (especially on a new, striking electric guitar) have matured as well. --Sam Sutherland

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