Well-made adult folk-jazz album with good lyrics. Court and Spark is a tea room. Cool and relaxing music like a beautiful summer afternoon, but which, unlike Cold Blue Steel on the previous album, this time serves a purely LUCRATIVE purpose.
This review feeds the reader with respect for everything that has already been written about the Joni of the 70’s. One of the great mothers of female emancipation in the rock and pop world, yes, she is.
In addition, blond, intelligent, open-hearted, jazz-experienced, intuitive music-making. Man, a real dream woman! But certainly difficult to endure over a longer period of time, at least for guys who buzz around Crawford / Lopez / Bullock pictures like moths. When you look at these female guys and their commercial success, one might wonder what Joni Mitchell’s mistake was for never climbing these heights. Sure, there were hits in her life too.
On the cover of this disc three are singled out: “Raised On Robbery“, “Help Me” and “Free Man in Paris“. However, I had never heard of it before. So they couldn’t have been that big, otherwise, they would have made it to oldie radio. But you never hear a Joni Mitchell song there anyway, so everything loses its sense, nothing is respected any more.
Help Me
This the hit from the album and got lots of airplay back in the day.
Raised On Robbery
Joni’s beautiful vocals in this song – that’s the secret to its success. It’s not the folk Joni Mitchell, somewhere in the tight junction between jazz and pop music — it doesn’t fall off and it doesn’t fall – it freaking rocks!
Free Man in Paris
is even more enjoyable, driving a comparable jazz-pop groove, and at this point exercising hits at the record business and presenting us with some of her most excellent lyrics ever.
Well, hold the ball flat. There is still no great reason to complain because if you want to challenge yourself, you still have the chance to purchase old Mitchell discs to explore this not enigmatic universe. The degree of difficulty, similar to the Steely Dan level, may be very high. Somehow, various records from that decade seem quite spooky.