20 years ago today: Joni Mitchell released Turbulent Indigo

Originally published in Hot press in 1994:

In the striking self-portrait that adorns the cover of Turbulent IndigoJoni Mitchell styles herself as Vincent Van Gogh, the tortured genius of the album’s title track. But once you delve into the grooves themselves, it becomes clear that as a painter of words and music, this woman still hardly owes anyone an artistic debt.

Like all the best self-portraits, Turbulent indigo is simultaneously introspective and outward-looking. On her first album in three years, Joni Mitchell still sings personal songs about love and loss, but also looks at an increasingly brutal world with an unwavering eye for the meaningful detail.

So the beginning, “Sunny Sunday,” accompanied by her trademark jazzy acoustic guitar, meticulously personalizes the theme of gun control and personalizes the situation of a desperate woman sitting in the darkness of her house, firing her pistol at the streetlight. “She always misses, but the day she hits, she’ll go.” Mitchell sings, making an unmistakable connection to what Dylan Thomas meant by the light going out.

“Sex Kills,” in which distant electric guitar shards add an icy note, aims at the bigger picture.

Back when they had begun to tear down paradise and build a parking lot, there was still a sense of freedom to explore on the white lines of the highway, and with it the likelihood of finding entertainment or solace, even if It was just in the arms of a nocturnal backcountry coyote hunting. In the world Joni Mitchell looks at now, she sees few opportunities for redemption: “The ulcerated ozone/These skin tumors/This hostile sun beating down on the vast mess we find ourselves in/And the gas leaks/And the oil spills/And sex kills everything/Sex kills.” . .”

In “Not To Blame,” she skillfully and angrily gets to the heart of the wife-beater’s perverse doublethink, and in “The Magdalene Laundries,” her bitter lament for one of Ireland’s national shames, she deftly turns religious propaganda back on itself: “Those bloodless brides of Jesus/If only they had seen their bridegroom once/Then they would know and they would drop the stones/Hidden behind their rosaries.”

If all of this points to an unrelentingly heavy listening experience, the instantly accessible music of Turbulent Indigo seductively argues otherwise. The album is full of beguiling melodies, while Mitchell herself is in great form, her voice as always intimate but compelling – never intrusive, but definitely ear-catching. And the arrangements are complemented by some memorable cameo appearances, including Wayne Shorter’s soprano sax, which spins and scatters like a flock of birds across the title track’s lush canvas, or guest Seal’s multi-tracked backing vocals, which deliver an attractive pop/Philly Adding appeal to “How do you stop?”

The opposite of the hard nut with the soft middle, Turbulent Indigo offers a rich and rare enjoyment of smooth late night music. But if you listen just a little closer, you might notice that you’re slowly drifting off to sleep.

– Liam Mackey