The Hissing of Summer Lawns |
|
Released: November 17, 1975 Peak: 4 US, 14 UK, 7 CN, 62 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.50 US Genre: folk |
Tracks:Song Title (Writers) [time] (date of single release, chart peaks)
All songs by Joni Mitchell unless noted otherwise. Total Running Time: 42:46 |
Rating: 3.961 out of 5.00 (average of 22 ratings)
Quotable:The rest of the pop world would take years to catch up to where she was here.” – Rolling StoneAwards:(Click on award to learn more).
|
About the Album:“There is something understated about the singularity of The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Joni Mitchell’s seventh studio album.” PM “As baffling as it is beautiful,” RD it is “an adventurous work that remains among her most difficult records.” AM “With no hit singles in tow and a bunch of negative reviews upon release, The Hissing of Summer Lawns was treated like a career suicide by Mitchell’s peers and critics.” PM “The rest of the pop world would take years to catch up to where she was here.” 500 “The naysayers have either died out or finally come around to the brilliance.” PMIncorporating Jazz and World Music“It was, at the time, Mitchell’s most ambitious album ever,” PM finding “the folk heroine branching away from the bedrock of her own sound” PM and “presaging the rock/pop world’s fascination for all things jazz and world by a decade.” RD She “evolved from the smooth jazz-pop of Court and Spark” AM by “embracing a more avant-leaning framework – which included sampling, Moog synths and elements performed by the LA Express and the Jazz Crusaders.” PMThe SongwritingJoni “got deeper into glamorous L.A. groove theory…reveling in the possibilities of pure melody for a set of songs where her genius as a producer shines just as brightly as her writing.” 500 “Mitchell’s vision…expanded thematically, turning her usual inward gaze out to the Seventies social-political scene.” RD It was “her most liberated, focusing on a rebellion against patriarchal tropes and the mundanity of suburbia.” PM The album “confirmed Mitchell as the ‘songwriter’s songwriter’” RD with “an eclectic collection of symphonic-style compositions.” RDThe SongsIn “the graceful In France They Kiss on Main Street,” AM Joni “bids farewell to the rock & roll era in a blaze of freewheeling, jazzy joy.” 500After that, “the album veers sharply into The Jungle Line, an odd, Moog-driven piece backed by the rhythms of the warrior drums of Burundi – a move into multiculturalism that beat the likes of Paul Simon, Peter Gabriel, and Sting to the punch by a decade.” AM Thematically, the song deals with “one of the album’s recurring images…the savage earth that beats beneath the respectability.” RD This theme also occurs in “the African imagery in Boho Dance and the album cover, featuring a group of natives carrying a vast snake across stylized suburban lawns.” RD “If Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow appears impenetrable, you may have not listened to the album in the spirit of which it was conceived – as a whole.” RD “Such precocity, however, is rewarded with” RD Edith and the Kingpin and Scarlett, in which Mitchell’s sublime, arched vocals perfectly match the melody and lyrical sentiment.” RD Songs like ‘Edith’ and Harry’s House/Centerpiece “are no less complex or idiosyncratic, employing minor-key melodies and richly detailed lyrics to arrive at a strange and beautiful fusion of jazz and shimmering avant pop.” AM The latter is a “gem” RD that “frames a story of a loveless high-society marriage in supper-club swank.” 500 It all winds up with “the hymn-like closer Shadows and Light,” RD which was one of Joni’s favorites. RD |
Reviews:
Related DMDB Links:
First posted 4/8/2008; last updated 10/15/2026. |
No comments:
Post a Comment