Rhino - Warner Records

After publishing Archives-Vol. 1: The Early Years (1963-1967), an imposing box set of Joni Mitchell's recordings, running to 119 mostly unreleased tracks that date from before her first official record, there now comes a collection of well-made, overdue remasterings of her studio albums. As its title suggests, The Reprise Albums (1968-1971) brings together the first four of these: Song to a Seagull (March 1968), Clouds (May 1969), Ladies of the Canyon (April 1970) and Blue (June 1971). The first four and nothing else! That means that we dispense with the usual alternative takes and other unreleased demos that we would usually find on this kind of reissue: the focus here is on the essentials. And what is essential here is a young woman gradually extracting herself from a folk idiom (the Canadian always hated being labelled a folk-singer) and creating her own language. This is an identity that takes shape from Songs to a Seagull onwards. The young Mitchell even entrusted the former Byrd, David Crosby, with the production of this first effort, which she divided into two sides: I Came to the City which looks towards the city, and Out of the City and Down by the Seaside, which turns towards nature. Joni Mitchell develops these themes with her open tuning, her high, clear, mesmerising voice, and a certain melodic richness. A big drawback to Songs to a Seagull is its original mix, which sounds almost shameful. This error was rectified for the 2021 re-release by sound engineer Matt Lee. “The original mix was atrocious. It sounded like it was recorded under a jello bowl, so I fixed it!” With Clouds, Joni Mitchell ploughs a similar furrow, but with greater harmonic and instrumental richness. The themes she addresses on this second album remain transparent enough, from the personal and introspective (I Don't Know Where I Stand) to the tormented and fearful (The Fiddle and the Drum), but the music has become denser.This feeling will intensify with Ladies of the Canyon, a hit which boosted her reputation. This third album saw the singer transform her folk sound with richer lyrics and increasingly subtle arrangements. Joni Mitchell was achieving unprecedented sophistication and becoming a unique star in the orbit of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, to whom she was still very much attached. Critics and audiences quickly fell in love with all of these quirks. But in spite of her fame she still yearned for freedom, and to get away from the limelight. So after Ladies of the Canyon was recorded, naturally Joni Mitchell wanted to set out travelling.One year later, Blue came out. Her fourth album on Reprise, it proved a cornerstone of her introspective, stripped-down folk sound. For all its lack of artifice and repetitive ingredients, this was a work of peerless grace and depth. A masterpiece conceived as a private journal set to music, it marked a real turning point in the career of the 28-year-old musician. This remaster offers up a definitive version. And that is just one more reason why The Reprise Albums (1968-1971) are totally in-dis-pen-sa-ble! © Marc Zisman/Qobuz

Fleetwood Mac's 1980 double-album Live was released as a way for the physically, emotionally, and creatively exhausted group to continue the winning streak that saw them dominate the last half of the '70s with Fleetwood Mac, Rumours, and Tusk. The band recorded audio and video at every one of the 112 (!) dates they played between October 1979 and September 1980 and then proceeded to put together an album that putatively represented a Tusk tour date. In that regard, Live was perhaps the apotheosis of the Frankenstein-ed "live" album. The 2-LP set didn't just combine recordings from multiple dates on the Tusk tour ... it pulled in songs from multiple tours to present a weird, idealized version of "a Fleetwood Mac concert." The original release threw in a few cuts from the Rumours tour, a song originally released by Buckingham Nicks ("Don't Let Me Down Again") that the Mac performed on tour in 1975, and even a couple of studio rarities ("Fireflies" and a cover of the Beach Boys' "Farmer's Daughter"). However the album may fail as an accurate piece of documentary audio it more than succeeds as a cohesive piece of rock 'n' roll. While some tracks do occasionally suffer a bit from the vagaries of live performance—a cracked voice here, a late guitar melody there—thanks to the embarrassment of riches in their song pool and given that the band was at the peak of their powers, the selection of their best individual performances yielded excellent results, and nearly all of the tracks bristle with energy, vibrancy, and a sense of creative electricity that was surely a bit of a crapshoot on such a long and grueling tour. And, in some cases—"Over and Over" and "Never Going Back Again" especially—the live versions captured here are actually superior to the studio takes, gaining an intensity and immediacy that accentuates their inherent drama. This new edition continues in the original's tradition, tacking on a third disc of live rarities that's similarly wide-ranging, including tracks recorded on the Mirage tour which happened two years after Live was originally released. While those extras feel (obviously) tacked on—more than an encore, but less than a standalone show—they also lack the flowing context of the main album and feel far more disjointed in their presentation. Nonetheless, getting to hear the Rumours band take on "The Green Manalishi (With The Two-Pronged Crown)" at the Oklahoma City State Fair Arena in 1977 or a transcendent version of "Songbird" from the tail end of the Tusk tour in Arkansas is still quite thrilling. © Jason Ferguson/Qobuz