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Nov 07, 2024 Web Exclusive By Hays Davis

The fourth volume in Joni Mitchell’s Archives series spans a period that finds her evolving as the most daring popular artist of that time. An essential companion to The Asylum Albums 1976-1980, which includes her late-’70s studio albums, Archives, Vol. 4 follows Mitchell as jazz further infuses her work. Turning well beyond the finished albums, the set reveals the album material as it was coming to life and follows it later to the stage, providing a bounty of tracks too rich to have been pinched off as handfuls of bonus inclusions to the records.

Archives Vol. 4 presents unreleased studio sessions, alternate versions, live recordings, and rarities over the period that produced the albums Hejira (1976), Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter (1977), Mingus (her 1979 collaboration with Charles Mingus), and the 1980 live album Shadows and Light. As jazz found its way deeper into her creative directions, Mitchell approached the genre as an innovator rather than an artistic tourist. Dropping in on the 1979 Mingus sessions, it’s fascinating to hear that material’s pieces coming together, with bassist Jaco Pastorius following Mitchell as she works through “The Wolf That Lives in Lindsey” and dropping bass stabs along the way. Producer Henry Lewy recorded Mitchell at the piano during her work on Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter, capturing an embryonic “Paprika Plains” and writing “Save Magic” on the tape box.

As the set moves chronologically, there are captured moments that round out the timeline, both within and outside of her album and tour work. A Washington, D.C. appearance at the May 6 Coalition Rally Against Nuclear Power in 1979 finds Mitchell introduced by Graham Nash for a performance of “Big Yellow Taxi” where she makes a relevant lyrical change: “They paved paradise and they put up a nuclear hot spot.” Performances from various shows throughout the period include Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, and recordings from her ’79 tour rehearsals find her preparing ahead of a string of U.S. dates.

One of the set’s key inclusions, a ’79 show at the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium in New York, is an important decade bookend as it showcases her live band and evolved sound as the ’70s were coming to an end. Pastorius, guitarist Pat Metheny, and the rest of her band play with an intimate feel for what Mitchell wants from and for these songs. With a setlist that primarily leans forward from 1975, the New York crowd is with her all the way, erupting at the words, “No regrets, coyote.” Mitchell is, in the moment, a traveler bringing only bits of her past with her, perhaps as she always intended. (www.jonimitchell.com)

Author rating: 9/10