Court And Spark

What a beautiful album. Again, this is another album I haven't heard before, but I am so glad that I've been able to experience it now. Joni Mitchell's voice is superb, right off the bat I was blown away by her performance and lyricism. The soft piano ballads and jazzy pop tunes are perfectly crafted and emotionally moving. I listened to this album twice, which is something I hadn't done with the previous albums. The song structures remind me of Joanna Newsome, but I think Mitchell does it much better. I felt connected to each story told in the songs, and the way they flowed together made the whole experience engrossing. Favorite track: all of them Least favorite track: none

Well, it's better than her later albums, I guess. But she's a much better poet than she is a singer. And a better singer than she is a melody-writer. I don't know why she seems to hate writing choruses so much. Most of the songs are just unstructured messes that never go anywhere. There's a story that Mitchell herself tells about Bob Dylan falling asleep when she played the album for him. It's funny but it's also understandable. It's a boring slog of an album. I would much rather have read these songs as poems than be forced to listen to Mitchell's wandering warble for an hour.

Interesting grunge dive. Can’t help but feel they aped nirvana a bit.

Sorry lady, not interested in the slides from your trip to Paris.

I do not understand the praise Joni Mitchell gets.

Before listening: I always imagined Joni Mitchell's audience as the Emma Thompson's character from Love Actually. Tragic, hopeless, alone.../ I started it for the second time and starting to like it at "Help me"/ The more folkish a song is the less I like it./ "Help me" and "Raised on Robbery" keeps pulling me back (even tough the second one is pretty folkish, but has good vibes, so I don't care)/ This is definitely not the Joni Mitchel I was expecting, and when reading a bit about her it seems that I could like her later stuff, when she ventured to jazzier stuff, seems like this was kind of a starting point.

My mom's favorite Joni album. Mine as well. Straight down the middle folk rock Joni. The trademark floating and swirling Joni melodies but this time with more energy Joni. More direct, incisive lyrics from Joni. More compelling jazz Joni. Incredible Joni production in surprising places (end of People's Parties, middle of Car on a Hill). I'd give it an easy 5 but the cringey final scat scat, so instead it's a labored 5. A+

Such overrated artist... maybe she should have been just a poet?

This album was so BORING. It wasn't actively *bad*, but I just didn't care about it.

Finally! A female artist, and it's the legend herself. I really love Joni Mitchell, I find myself torn between thinking she or Bob Dylan is the better songwriter. Hard to argue it's Bob in the face of "Both Sides Now." I haven't listened to this album before, but it's great. It only has one song that I already knew ("Help Me"), but there's plenty of heat here. I really like the exploration of different genres--Joni dips into jazz on some tracks, then more rock/pop on others. It doesn't always suit her, but her voice cuts through anything. It's a great experience overall and held my attention throughout. I'm looking forward to getting more Joni Mitchell albums, especially Blue. Also, if this list listened to my plea for female artists, maybe it will hear me ask to honor Black History Month...maybe some Jimi Hendrix? Aretha Franklin? We'll see what's in store. Favorite tracks: Help Me, People's Parties, Down to You, Twisted. Album art: Simple and sweet. I like the textured look. Nothing too special, but it looks like Joni herself may have painted that picture. That's extremely cool. 4.5/5

I love Joni’s voice in the same vein of Chris’s love for Adele. She has such total command over her voice as an instrument, not just in maintaining pitch, but in volume, delivery, especially cadence. I could listen to her sing the verses of Help Me a million times and never get tired of it. On top of her second-to-none vocal talent, the music is interesting enough. This album, IIRC, is about when she begins a pretty full dive into more jazz. Extra star for real guitar, drums, and tasteful horns, but it won’t let me add a 6th star.

Joni Mitchell? More like moany shitshow.

Rating: 10/10 A classic album. Joni Mitchell sounds fantastic, beautiful vocals and great lyrics. This album is absolutely gorgeous. Lush, detailed instrumentation and pristine production. Loved everything about this album, honestly wish some of the songs were longer but that speaks to how amazing this album is. Favorite tracks: Pretty much the whole album but highlights were Court and Speak, Help Me, Car on a Hill, Raised on Robbery, Troubled Child. Least Favorite song: Down to You, a bit too long but still great though.

Joni Mitchell's voice is such an elixir for the ears. Very expressive and dynamic, with the perfect mix of vulnerability and cool aloofness. I could listen to her sing a shopping list. But the songs here are mostly elaborate monologues of experience and emotion. It's pretty hard to make those kinds of song work, but her voice brings them alive. The music is good, with interesting jazzy additions to the folk palette - but really it's all a backdrop for the voice. The final track is impeccable vocal jazz performance, and I would love to hear a whole album of that. Overall, this album doesn't quite reach the soaring heights of Blue, and I don't really like how it takes a sharp turn in sound for the last three tracks (though they are still good tracks!) so I have to give it a 4*.

It's like a well-executed, yet unflavored custard. Pleasant enough but there's no point in eating it.

Easily the most accessible Joni album I've heard. I prefer her jazzier albums with Jaco but that takes nothing away from this one. Really enjoyable listening.

I could listen to this every day.

Legendary singer/songwriter, beautiful music, absolute masterpiece.

How can you not love Joni

I was gonna give this only 4 stars but I don't think my mom would ever forgive me if she found out, so I'm rounding up.

Joni Mitchell is overrated. She is a good poet, but not really a musical artist. I don't know why she seems to hate writing choruses so much. Most of the songs are just unstructured messes that never go anywhere. 2⭐️

Incredible melodies and lyrics. Not typical pop music at all. Interesting jazz influences and flourishes. Joni Mitchell is a genius. Every song is an interesting adventure.

It’s a testament to how great Joni Mitchell that this can be a perfect album and still not my favorite by her

Folk, guitar moving into some jazzy flourishes. She knocks it out the park again. Best Tracks: Court and Spark, Raised on Robbery, Twisted

Another high note in a very specific genre (that basically has a one woman sub genre in this particular performer). About perfect, if you like this kind of thing (which I do)

Like a lot of Joni Mitchell's music, I choose to like this album. She doesn't always make it easy for me to like it and in other hands a lot of these sounds and pretensions would seriously irritate me. A lot of these songs have parts I really like and parts I really don't like, often right after one another. I share a home with one or more people who seriously hate her music. So I have to be strategic about when and where I listen to it. In fairness to my housemates, Joni Mitchell's a bit of a musician's musician, I think, and that you'll hear a lot of people like Jimmy Page waxing poetic about her amazing guitar playing, but not a lot of non-musicians waxing about her. I think that's part of why she largely been forgotten over the last 20 or so years. Free Man In Paris is supposedly about David Geffen, who was her manager at the time and during a trip to France together was bitching to her about having put up with random calls from temperamental artists at all hours but in Paris where no one could reach him he was finally free and could relax a little. That's one tune I like all the way through without any major irritations. But my favorite story about Joni Mitchell and David Geffen was the time when he drove her to Woodstock and they got stuck in traffic and ended up just camping out in a motel room and watching the festival on TV where she wrote her song Woodstock that her boyfriend Graham Nash made famous with CSN a year or two later.

It's a good full-listen, but my aversion to singing that speeds up and slows down makes it hard to fall in love with most tracks.

This is the second Joni Mitchell album in about a week. They're also not on Spotify cause she "stuck it to the man". So I'm honouring her wishes and not listening - the only time I'll do so in this project (because fuck mean spirited "hippie" boomer cunts like her and Neil Young). Thankfully I know how much her music sucks anyway. So here's a 1/5 and I hope this sets a lovely precedent where I never have to hear her awful wailing again.

at its best its female madman-era elton john written by a 14 yo girl who just went through her first breakup standing in for taupin. at its worst it sounds like joni mitchell. boring, repetitive instrumentation. trite, on-the-nose lyrics. i actively hate it. closing track was particularly insulting

I’m sorry…why haven’t I been listening to Joni Mitchell? Her albums on this list, so far, have been *excellent*. On Court and Spark, her voice, as always, is beautiful and unique, the instrumentation is varied, lively and engaging. Her blend of folk and jazz manages to be both soothing and invigorating, with flourishes of ambitious sonic textures and experimentation. What an excellent album.

Easy 5 even with the awful last track (that I since discovered is not by Joni at all!). Her voice sounds "softest" here compared to the other '70s classics although the songs are far from "pop". Great album

Gorgeous, Side B is a bit weak though.

Her voice and phrasing is just mesmerizing. She moves effortless from her chest voice to her head voice. The harmonizing on several tracks is angelic. Her expressiveness and vulnerability draws you in. Must listen to tracks are Help Me, Free Man in Paris, and Raised on Robbery is just fun.

Another neglected purchase on my hard drive, I may have skimmed off the opening, Broadway-esque piano chords, not in the mood. Silly me, this is very good, and I'm finding it hard to sum up why. Am tired and a blizzard arrives tomorrow, and I imagine this record would be good, conversational company for it. The instrumentation is superficially super normal and actually deeply weird. Free Man in Paris's Paris is a little Emily in Paris; it is still a good song.

I’d say it’s up there with her best pieces of work (I prefer The Hissing of Summer Lawns more though)

When this is all over, if at least 50% of my reviews are threes, then I will say that I have assessed correctly.

I enjoyed it, she has a really nice voice, and very poetic lyrics. To me, the lyrics actually gave off strong Taylor Swift vibes, it’s the stories she tells and vulnerability in the way in which she talks about her emotions. Her and Swift may be decades apart in their age and musical careers, but they have the same inner emotional landscape driving their song-writing. Well that’s my take anyway.

I sense the talent but it's just on the verge of tipping me over into really liking it

Can be tough-going Joni. When she's great she's super-brilliant, eg River, Both Sides Now, but the jazz-folk fusion can be a bit grating. This album, for me, was more of the latter.

not available on Spotify?

I didn't realize I hated Joni Mitchell so much. It's one of those names I've heard a bunch but never listened to.

A five for me. Help Me is beautiful. In a younger time when having such preferences seemed to matter… People’s Parties contains my favourite chord. It still hits. Raised on Robbery is the real jewel in this crown.

Beautiful. Love this. I’ve never really listened to Joni Mitchell before. Why has nobody ever sat me down and said “Mike, you need to listen to Joni Mitchell.”

It is staggering the level of musicality that is held within the 3m2s of Car on a Hill. I have generally favored Hejira but relistening to this after many years away - it's tough to beat. Choruses are on short supply. Melodies extend beyond simple pop convention. She feels fully liberated here. An artist. Like a relationship - if you open yourself up it hits the head and the heart.

Wow. Simply beautiful. "Help Me" will always be a favourite of mine, but the whole album is a work of art. Joni seems to have a knack for writing the most beautiful and poignant lyrics that I so often don't understand a lick of, while dancing them around clothed in meandering melodies that just make you want to get lost in them. A stunning album.

Court and Spark Although I know some of the songs in here, I've not listened to this album before. The opening bars of the title track, although I don’t think I’ve heard it before, are immediately warm and enveloping and comforting, she really does have the knack of making songs feel immediately familiar, as you’ve always known them. I do already know Help Me, but it also has that same feeling of always having existed, and being immediately comforting, like a kind of nostalgic warmth for something I’ve never experienced, even if the lyrics are more emotionally ambivalent by the end of the song. The brilliance of those two songs continues on the rest of side 1, with the excellent Free Man in Paris, the pen portrait People’s Parties and brilliant piano-led The Same Situation with some lovely steel guitar sounds. The 2nd side very slightly doesn’t quite match the quality of side 1, purely because the cover of Twisted doesn’t really do it for me, it has just a little too much forced jazz hands showtune energy for my taste. Outside that though the rest of the songs are again excellent. The soft rock adjacent Car on a Hill, with its spacey middle section, is great and Down To You is a fantastic song, the meandering piano line evoking the weariness in the words. Just Like This Train is another lovely track and although I wasn’t initially as keen on Raised on Robbery I came to very much like its shot of bluesy pop-rock. And Trouble Child is great, it has a nice Steely Dan-ness to it, and I presume the title and opening riff is an evocation of Trouble Man by Marvin Gaye? Even with Twisted, it’s hard not to give this a 5. It's a brilliant album, combining her characteristic shuffling jazzy folkiness, with her idiosyncratic rhyme schemes and uniquely brilliant voice. 🧨🧨🧨🧨🧨 Playlist submission: Down to You

I found it pleasant and engaging.

Listened on the drive to the mall and while walking around the mall. What an incredible story teller. Great range and variety of sounds on this record too. Down To You is a masterpiece of a song. Great record!

Beautiful tone, and songwriting that grabs me throughout. Especially Raised on Robbery & Free Man in Paris

L’ho ascoltato in macchina ieri, mi ha trasmesso un senso di pace e calma. Bella scoperta, mi è piaciuto

My favorite of her albums and that's saying something. Brilliant songwriter and wonderful singer.

Longtemps restée dans l'ombre de son petit-fils Eddy, Joni Mitchell n'en a pour autant pas moins de talent. C'était d'ailleurs prévisible. Je m'explique. Une fois que l'on a compris que Joni était une femme et non un énième gonze, on se doute que l'album sera bon puisque à l'exception de Patti Smith et sa crête iroquoise, aucune représentante de la gente féminine n'a obtenu moins de quatre étoiles de ma part. Et cet album les vaut bien.

great full band and piano, riffs can be pretty fun to listen to

3.5 - decent album. Compared to the first Joni Mitchell album I heard, this one actually makes me understand why people hold her in such high regard

Sorry Shane :-( good songs and great instrumentation but it’s a voice thing

Hated this on the first listen but really enjoyed it second time around

a very intresting mix, nice deep lyrics, love the mesh of the different elements... i expect this to age well, specially the uniqueness of the jazz pop sound which im excited to try in diff contexts. a very strong 3.

This was better Joni Mitchell than The Hissing of Summer Lawns. Still not my style, but much better.

Folk Music. :/

This wasn’t terrible but it’s not for me. Something about her style or voice just makes every song sound the same. Needs to throw a chorus in every once in a while. 2.5

Joni Mitchell is a polarizing figure for me. I enjoy her folky stuff more than her easy listening jazzy style stuff.

Couldn’t find it on Spotify and in the end not overly mad about it. Deedle deedle deedle

I really liked her voice, but the songs are a bit too generic and flat. I'm sure the lyrics are meaningful but I couldn't be bothered to pay them any mind because of this.

meh, just not really my style

A bit meandering and winding in places; middle of the road. Good album for dinner parties.

2 Joni Mitchell albums in 3 days, am I in purgatory?

Realised after one hour that the album was over and that I wasn't listening to anything. Completely forgettable (for me) and even more astonishing if you see the (good) ratings it got on release.

Girls just wanna have fun but this album does not let that. It's so boring except the Twisted song.

I feel like this is what divorced cigarette moms listen to.

Joni Mitchell's painting "The Mountain Loves The Sea," is on the cover with art direction and design by Anthony Hudson. Its her record and she can do what she likes.

The evolution of Joni Mitchell is one of my favourite transformations in popular music. This album leads on to The Hissing Of Summer Lawns and Hejira. All three albums are magnificent.

Lovely!

this was the perfect thing to be listening to after driving to work for the first time while getting the news that after months of toiling away, I finally got the FISMA-ready approval, absolutely euphoric (9/23/26)

The yin to Blue's yang, a full-bodied, beautifully arranged, effortlessly sophisticated amalgam of jazz, folk and pop. The first half is completely flawless and the second half is a ball too, if slightly less iconic. Of all of Joni's albums, this is one of the most day-to-day listenable- it's smooth as hell but really energetic with images and phrasings that leap out at you. It doesn't bog you down with too much ache but it's never emotionally simplistic either. Musically sophisticated but still playful and never too out there. You can play it at parties. It's her perfectly wonderful sweet spot. The warmth of vinyl always presents Joni at her best, but I did quite enjoy the remaster from 2022 that's streaming. She knew she was a wizard at age 3, and she was right.

The critic choice for Joni tends to be Blue, and the fanbase/music nerd choice tends to be Hejira, but Court and Spark may well be my favourite album of hers. Considering she's known for being a deeply personal and confessional songwriter, this is probably the least personal of her imperial phrase. Instead, it's character studies and stories, accompanied by lush instrumental, soaring voal accompaniments which would make Bob Dylan feel castrated, and a sense of fun and humour. It's also a significant leap away from her folky beginnings, with the latter half of the album playing around with more diverse, in particular more jazzy, instrumentation. Raised on Robbery is probably the closest Joni gets to a 'banger', and Twisted has a fantastic foot-tapping rhythm. Even with this, there's still profound and memorable lyricism, in particular on Similar Situations, with the line "I said wend me somebody who's strong and somewhat sincere".

The neediness song

Another joni banger!!

Joni is folk-rock luminosity! This album is a smoothe cup of tea with a few spiced notes, all wrapped up in fantastic stories of love, self-consciousness, adventures and relationships.

Gotta love Joni! Such a unique voice and talent.

Wow wow WOW. New instant classic for me. So many of my favorite Joni songs were on this album, but never listened to the whole work in full. Such a stunning Labor Day listen.

Great production choices with wonderfully placed guest artists. Four albums by Joni on this list seems a bit excessive. However, this one does deserve a place on any long format list of top albums of all-time.

Beautiful voice beautiful songs. Joni Mitchell makes me think of my mum, even though her favourite Joni song isn’t on this album. I think Joni Mitchell can often be overlooked by a lot of musos in Britain, this album is class and so is she. 5.0/5.0 Best Song: Just Like This Train

Superb album, an album of hers I have not listened to as much as others, but the familiarity of a couple of songs, Court and Spark, Help Me mean this is laced with all timers. An incredible musician, artist, and without a doubt the most iconic female voice of all time. Put it straight back on repeat to enjoy all over again, love this and I will be rinsing it a lot more.

Ashamed to admit I've never listened to a full Joni Mitchell album, despite knowing her legendary status. I am so glad this album has rectified that. Smooth as silk vocal tone, and such gorgeous feel on every song. The musicality of this album is fabulous.

nice

I can hear in this where a lot of other musicians I enjoy have gotten some inspiration

Lovely Album

For me, this is Joni at her best. 5 stars or A-.

Brilliant! I love this woman!

essentially perfect

Another name I've heard. A beautiful voice! Very interesting lyrics, feels like listening to poetry readings in a good way. Loved the piano and the choral sections. Very interesting listen. Twisted was a stand out for sure!! Will likely seek out more by her in the future!

Laughin and cryin you know it's the same release. Masterpiece! And yes that is Cheech and Chong on Twisted

Very diverse. I liked how jazzy it was

Very easy listening that caresses the soul and soothes your ears. 10/10

One of my favourite albums of all time.

Exceptional

This is my favorite Joni Mitchell album. It's the moment she expanded out of folk and weaved in jazz elements without losing the focus of the song. The stories of frustrating love affairs and David Geffen's frustration with the industry feel tangible and emotional. I know Joni is not for everyone but, if she is, this is the pinnacle.

Jazz Folk...What a concept...What a record.

This is everything that was missing from her other record on here. Superb.

I love this album so much. The lyrics, the music and Joni’s voice - all of it.