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By PAUL ZOLLO
 'm not going to start at the beginning of this review as this album doesn't really start at the beginning. It starts with Prince. At least that's where it starts for me. Officially it begins with Sufjan Stevens doing a creative but ultimately bizarre rendition of "Free Man In Paris." Why Robert Hurwitz, the exec producer, would opt for this opening when a masterpiece is in our midst is beyond me. Prince's turn doesn't come till cut six. A safe assumption would be that he wanted Prince in the exact middle, so the album wouldn't peak too soon. But it feels like a misstep, even after repeated listenings. Though there are some very strong cuts prior to Prince's arrival (most notably the beguiling Bjork track), as soon as Prince starts singing Joni's classic "A Case Of You," it's evidence that this record is much more than some brief detour on the way to meaningful music. It declares that this is serious stuff, music that matters, one for the ages. And things just pick up from there (such as the heartfelt contributions of the forementioned Bjork, Emmylou Harris, Elvis Costello, Annie Lennox and James Taylor.)
Prince has shown us over the years, as has Joni - that he's about as great as great gets: inspirational, deeply soulful, gloriously melodic, profane, sacred and vital. So when you get Joni and Prince in the same room - or on the same album, Prince singing Joni - the result is transcendent. He's said for years that he loves her, but I don't know if anyone was listening. Yet I always heard his lyric in "Kiss" ("I just want your extra time") as a tip of his Princely hat to Joni's "Jericho" ("I need your confidence, baby, and the gift of your extra time/In turn I'll give you mine…") Because as simple as that line is in the context of Joni's expansive work, it's so essentially her - the gift of your extra time. A recognition that there are two individuals here, two adults - and one is asking the other not for everything, not for all their time as might a child, but just a tiny offering, a gift. Something special. Prince picked up on it, and now he picks up on one of Joni's most famous and idiosyncratic songs. Built on the foundation of a simple metaphor that in someone else's hands and voice could come off as clumsy and ineffective, but by being channeled through Joni's singular soul it's poignant and perfect: "I could drink a case of you and still I'd be on my feet."
As soon as he starts, in a hushed, breathless falsetto, singing her famous opening line, a line that is specific to her life, so tender, and nakedly revealing, "I am a lonely painter/I live in a box of paints…" you know this isn't some sonic wallpaper, this is the real thing. This is stop-whatever-you're-doing, time-to-listen time. This is music at its best, the ideal intersection of rhythm and melody and mind and heart. And then just a hint of the softest groove is introduced on the second line, a backbeat rim-shot - he's painting Joni as Joni would paint, with a fine, sensitive brush-stroke, not spray-paint - and he sets that against rich rolling acoustic piano chords, and we are in the deepest pocket of American soul, and the hearts of two great artists are united for the first time on record. Prince and Joni. At the same time. There are few artists who could sing this song of all of Joni's songs - which is many people's favorites from their favorite Joni album (Blue) - and bring it to this level, rather then be diminished by comparisons to the source. "You're in my blood like holy wine," he sings, and we believe it. We are in church here with Prince, and as he sings "remember you told me love was touching souls? Surely you've touched mine and part of you pours out of me in these lines from time to time," he is singing directly to Joni, and it's reverent, and it's an exhortation, a solid tribute to her, and an expression from him to all who listen that she is an Artist, that she has made music that matters, and their souls have touched, and her soul is reflected in his music. And then he stretches out on the melody on the piano, and it's pure soul and jazz and Joni all fused. I've always considered Prince to be one of the coolest dudes in all of dudedom, and felt he showed transcendent coolness in singling out Joni as a major influence when so many of his compatriots pointed to those in more obvious R&B and soul lineage as idols. That her distinctive language spoke to him tells us volumes about this mysterious, often misunderstood man.
This is all about respect - respect for a great songwriter, and respect for the material. Those artists here - the majority - who show this respect have created the most effective tribute - allowing these sings to live in a new way. There's a profound difference between interpreting a song by Joni (or any of the post-Dylan singer-songwriters) and interpreting a song by any of the great songwriters from previous generations, be it Gershwin, Kern, Arlen or the rest. It's a difference that lies in the fact that Joni (and her generation) didn't write their songs for other singers to cover - they wrote them for themselves to sing. Their mystic depth derives directly from this intimacy - a writer expressing a direct confidence, access to their own soul. While the words to a Gershwin or Arlen song are certainly lovely, those songs are all about the melodies - the words are there to deliver the tune. Those lyrics are the messengers, and the message is the music. In Joni's songs, the message is in the essential combination of the music and the words -- the "crucial balance" (as Simon put it) between the two. So one simply cannot take the kind of liberties with one of her songs as you would with a page torn from the Great American Songbook. While Coltrane can endow "My Favorite Things" with a vitality that transcends any vocal version of the song, an instrumental version of one of Joni's songs seriously lacks a vital dimension, like a beautifully appointed hotel with empty, vacant rooms. (As evidenced here by Brad Mehldau's acoustic piano instrumental interpretation of "Don't Interrupt The Sorrow." It's artfully executed - the man has chops - but it doesn't fit here. A whole album of jazz artists interpreting her work could be cool, but here, in this sea of seasoned and sensitive vocalists, this sounds lacking and in the way. )
And similarly, if you change the music radically and make it all about the words, that's also wrong - as Sufjan has done here. He takes Joni's great melody of "Free Man In Paris" and plays games with it - albeit inventive games, shifting not only the tempo but the beat -- even skipping strangely into waltz-time for passages - but it desperately misses the great West Coast quicksilver mercury sound of the original, which is ideally suited to its theme of a slick record exec greasing that now iconic "star maker machinery." The guy in Sufjan's song doesn't seem like a bigwig on Sunset Boulevard, where he belongs, but more like a tourist on a train somewhere between Borneo and Barcelona. The focus is wrong.
But when a singer sings the song straight - bringing the own power of their soul to the words without obscuring the melody - as does Emmylou Harris in her heartrending rendition of "The Magdalene Laundries," stripping away all artifice to get right to the core of the song - the result is compelling and powerful. She underscores the pure genius that is Joni - there's a kind of language and measure of thought that nobody but Joni conceives - and hearing it in the immaculate, earnest earthiness that is Emmy Lou's voice epitomizes the remarkable, often sorrowful perspective that is Joni's gift. It's highly intelligent but also deeply sensitive. She's an intellectual, but one who is plugged directly into the electricity that is human emotion. Listen to Emmylou sing these lines and you'll understand: "These bloodless brides of Jesus/if they just once glimpsed their groom, then they'd know/and they'd drop the stones concealed behind their rosaries…" Who else would write that? It's as if we're accustomed and no longer surprised to hearing Joni sing lines of this depth - pulling the camera back to give us an objective view of a scene while also zooming in for a stark emotional close-up - but when another singer sings it who honors the material and respects the songwriter - and Emmy Lou has always been about real respect for songwriters - we can experience the full breadth of Joni's achievement anew.
Which is not to say a singer must sing the song just as Joni did for it to succeed. There are ways of bringing new life and light to a song without obscuring it. It's like the difference between redecorating a house, and knocking down everything but the foundation to build a new one. These songs all work already. All you need to do is not screw with them. Their power is inherent. One must simply grasp the key to the song, and then unlocking its majesty and mystery can be done in myriad ways. For example, Bjork's rendering of "The Bojo Dance" - it's a whole different groove, a whole different color and mood from Joni's - yet it's revelatory, shining a light that illuminates previously unseen dimensions of this song. Her crystalline enunciation, shaped by her endearing Icelandic accent, and her restrained passion, delivers even more than some might have expected from this, which is certainly not one of Joni's best known songs. When she voices, "…books where artists in noble poverty go like virgins to the grave/don't you get sensitive on me," it comes across with a pointed candor that is wonderful - she hits 'virgins' with a vigor that is stunning. And the delicate track, sans any drums, founded on a sparkling piano riff, and accented with gentle moments of backwards masking, frames the song without overwhelming it, so that the vocal breathes with real grace. My guess is that Joni would dig it. It's artistic but without any pretension; it's emotionally pure.
Also great here is "Ladies Of The Canyon" by Annie Lennox, who doesn't alter the melody - though she lets it breathe on the third line of each verse, allowing the tune to ripen in all its glory, and to augment the tension that sets up the release. It's respectful, artful, and not overdone. k.d. lang, unlike most of the artists here, actually chose one of Joni's most famous songs, "Help Me," which was a shiny and romantic hit for Joni. k. d. reveals much respect for the material and its author, employing similar phrasing, harmonies and groove to the original. It's not insurgent, but it does bear a diffident quality of passion and seasoned romanticism that softly succeeds.
Sarah McLachlan's "Blue" is also quite respectful - employing not only the melody as written, but also Joni's phrasing and emphasis as an engine for these beautiful lyrics of deep wistful blue. Again, this is about the crucial balance - it's both the melody and the words which transmit this emotion, this story, and at times Sarah accentuates this beautiful balance by removing all the instruments except the instrument of her voice, and it's quite effective. She even adds harmonies to lines that Joni didn't harmonize, but it works - as she uses Joni-like stacked harmonies all in her own voice, with a very high ghostly voice on top. Rather than eclipse the song with her own pretensions, she milks all the beauty out of it, and it becomes another solid tribute to Joni.
Elvis Costello, who is not only one of our best living songwriters - a master of the crucial balance - but also one of the best vocalists around, has chosen "Edith and the Kingpin" to perform, an unlikely choice given how many beautiful and amazing songs that Joni has written that he could have burned on. This is a mysterious song, and Elvis adds an arch noir-like serpentine horn-laden arrangement to it, not unlike his recent outing with the Metropole Orkest in which he recast many of his songs in a snappy jazz suit. This is a good track - interesting arrangement and sensitive vocal. But it doesn't flash with the kind of brilliance of which he's capable. It doesn't savage the song, but it's not astounding like the Prince track.
Closing the album with James Taylor's spiritually-tinged jazzy turn on "River" was a good choice. It's an affable ending for this tribute, a heartfelt connection between friends, and between this artist and the collective Joni & James audience, who will revel in this gentle performance. It's just James' clear and soulful pipes with his finger-picked acoustic guitar plus electric bass and tasteful acoustic piano; he extends some of the chords in what's essentially a fairly diatonic song considering Joni's adventurous harmonic apetite. But he maintains a solid respect for the melody and the wintertide sentiment of yearning for an idyllic "river to skate away on." It's happier than Joni's deep blue performance of it, as if he's smiling to Joni, and to us, rather than invest himself too deeply into the melancholy and emotional hunger of the words. But it ultimately works well, because James is a great American vocalist (his version of "Our Town," Randy Newman's song for Cars was the Best Song of the Year in the movies, regardless of how that Academy voted) and he carries the beautiful melody and words with exultant gravity; hearing him sing songs by his friends reinforces the recognition that he possesses a gentle and poignant clarity in his voice that is unlike any other. Like both Joni and Elvis Costello, JT's greatness as a vocalist is often submerged by our focus on his songs. But he deserves to be up there with Bing Crosby and Nat "King" Cole in his capacity for bringing a golden tenderness to everything he touches. His voice is as resonant and timeless as is his acoustic guitar tone.
So, sequencing aside and a couple of missteps, this is good stuff. Just the Prince cut alone makes this worth owning - but unlike many tributes to songwriters that are nice for a few listenings, this is nourishing, this is solidly artful, and equal to the momentous task of paying a true tribute to this legendary lady of the canyon. We all thank God that we live in a world where we can hear Joni Mitchell's songs, and the best of these tracks bear that kind of gratitude both for her gift, and for the talent to propel a new rendition of one of her amazing songs into our world.
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