Shine On, You Crazy Crow

I happen to love the hour before sunrise.

It's when everything is possible. The streets are quiet. The air is...well, as fresh as it can be. There's something comforting about looking at the buildings next to me, knowing that most of their inhabitants are immobile, lost in dreams, or like me, anxious to begin something.

This morning I awoke at 5 a.m., threw on a pair of jeans and stumbled out the door at 5:30. I jingled my keys in front of me as I left the building, knowing that 5:30 a.m. was a time when our resident rats in the front yard came back from a night of hunting.

I was hunting, too. You see, today's Joni Day.

Joni Mitchell's new album--her first of new material since 1998--was released today at Starbucks. Yup, she's joined the ranks of Sir Paul McCartney and signed on with Hear Music, Starbucks' label.

When I first heard about the deal, I was skeptical. The only thing going through my mind was that the company would plug my dear, sacred diva with the same non-subtlety they did McCartney when his album came out last spring. Let's face it, if I had to look at his goofy, "I'm still cute, aren't I?" mug taunting me from a window decal one more time...

However, I was glad to actually have to search for Joni's album. And there it was--a whole stack of them, positioned just by the register. I chose a copy that wasn't at the very front--kind of how I choose newspapers from a machine. I had a nice chat with the barrista, who was excited about my purchase. We talked about Herbie Hancock's album, a tribute to Joni's music, also released today. And in a minute I was back at my apartment, ripping open the CD and mentally preparing myself for the first listen. It was one of those times when I was glad there was a Starbucks on every corner in Dupont Circle.

You see, if you know me at all--and likely even if you don't--you'll be aware that for me, the release of a Joni Mitchell album is akin to a Harry Potter fan waiting in line for the next installment...or a line of sci-fi geeks lined up for a new Star Wars movie. Yeah, it means that much to me.

Shine is the name of this album. It's amazing that it exists at all, really. Five years ago, Joni famously "quit" the music business, calling it a cesspool and run by pigs and whatever else she said at the time. Her vitriolic attitude was hinted at during her last album, 1998's Taming the Tiger. And even though I knew she threatened to do the same thing back in 1969, somehow this time I believed her.

But hey, a woman of heart and mind has the right to change both of them.

I've listened to this new album exactly once, and the whole way through. I did what I always do with her work...I listen sequentially (something rare in this digital age, when we approach our recorded material like a buffet), and I read the lyrics as the song goes by. So with just one listen under my belt, I'm "reviewing" Shine.

You'll read a lot about this record--how it's a collection of protest songs, how Joni's voice is weathered by years of (and I love this phrase) "committed smoking," and how it's a dark warning that if we don't shape up, our planet and our society are doomed.

Well, that's not far off the mark. Not since the 1985 album Dog Eat Dog, which in my opinion has aged as well as leg-warmers (read: I don't like it) has Joni been so political, so socially-conscious, such a harbinger of doom, in a way.

But this time, her delivery is wiser where it was once bombastic; her melodies are beautiful where they were once occasionally cacophonous; and her lyrics make you think where before they just sort of made you grimace.

This is a fucking beautiful record. No doubt. Even those of you who may not find Joni to be the master that some of us do will find some beauty in these sparse, delicate arrangements. The album opens with an instrumental, "One Week Last Summer," a piano-based song that Joni claims was the first thing she wrote when sitting down to the piano for the first time in a decade. It sets the tone for the rest of the record.

I won't go into Shine track by track. Like only a few of its predecessors, it is a Joni Mitchell album that defies dissection. It's a whole work. And in some cases, it transcends beyond anything she's done in the last 25...yes, I said 25...years.

I will say, however, that three songs really grabbed me and I can't wait to hear them again. "If I Had a Heart" is one of them. As is "This Place," and likewise for the last track on the album, "If"--based on Rudyard Kipling's poem of the same name. I will also predict that "If" will be the song that propels this album into the public perception--beyond Starbucks junkies and beyond die-hard fans like me. Trust me; it's good.

Joni calls her publishing company Crazy Crow Music. The name is derivative of American Indian folklore...and on Shine, as she has on the last 8 or so of her albums, Joni makes references to Native American culture, its fables, its beliefs, and most importantly, its predictions. We are killing our land. We are messing with the cosmos. We are power-hungry and we love war. We've taken what we've been given and we've fucked it up. Big time.

I can't say those statements aren't true to some extent. And Joni certainly isn't backing down when she makes them. One could say she's like an Earth Mother who swoops down every decade and wags a firm but gentle (and likely yellowed from all those American Spirits) finger at us, reminding us that we better lie in this stinking bed we made, or get the fuck up and change the sheets.

Shine is like a call to change the sheets. Although some of the songs threaten to sag and bow under their heft, the album's sequence allows the listener to not get too mired in the negative, not to get dragged down too far before a sprightlier track lifts him or her up again. One in particular is "Night of the Iguana," which is one of the catchier up-tempo songs of her career. Another is a zippy cover of her own ubiquitous chestnut "Big Yellow Taxi"--which honestly fits into the fabric of Shine very well. Its presence like something old at a wedding...nah, I won't make the obvious "something Blue" reference. You get the point.

So I have to admit something here--Shine is missing something that, at least in my mind, is really quite crucial to a collection of Crazy Crow Music. It's Joni's art. The cover is a very cool photo of some of the dancers who participated in "The Fiddle and the Drum," a new ballet based on Joni's music (the third in a series of new Joni works, along with an photography exhibit coming to New York soon), and photos of the dancers are featured throughout the liner notes. (Side note: I wonder if the male dancers' finely sculpted backsides on the cover photo are the reason there's a paper band over the CD itself). But what's missing are the fantastic, self-brushed paintings Joni's last four albums featured. And for that matter there isn't a single photo of her in the liner notes.

But then I suppose this visual aspect is absent for a reason. The lyrics to the songs are what Joni wants us to focus on, not the art. And that makes sense. You have to read this album as well as listen to it.

The sun was coming up as I listened to the final notes of Shine. It was one of those moments that I know I'll remember every time I listen to it. The nice thing about Joni Day is that I don't have to devote 12 hours to reading 900 pages, or wait in a crowded theater with annoying people, sitting through 300 previews and commercials before I got the goods. My first listen to Shine was a perfectly individual experience.

Oh, and the pumpkin spice latte was good, too.

The last lines of Shine--from the song "If"--are "You've got the fight, you've got the insight." And on this uplifting and inspiring note, the music stops.

And at the moment it did on that first listen, somewhere in a tree in the alley behind my house, I heard the unmistakeable "caw" of some crazy-ass crow.