Clouds (Joni Mitchell album)

Clouds
Studio album by Joni Mitchell
Released	May 1969
Recorded	1969 A&M Studios, Hollywood
Genre	Folk-rock
Length	37:39
Label	Reprise
Producer	Joni Mitchell, Paul Rothchild on "Tin Angel"
Joni Mitchell chronology
Song to a Seagull (1968) Clouds (1969) Ladies of the Canyon (1970)

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
Allmusic	[1]
Robert Christgau	(C)[2]

Clouds is the 1969 second album by Joni Mitchell. It is sparsely arranged, with little more than Mitchell's voice and solo acoustic guitar for accompaniment. All Music describes "Songs to Aging Children Come" as featuring "perhaps the most remarkably sophisticated chord sequence in all of pop music",^[3] employing chords chromatically related by tritone or thirds.^[4][5]

Particularly well known are the songs "Both Sides, Now", which had been previously covered by others -- most notably Judy Collins, whose 1967 recording of the song reached the U.S. pop top-ten -- but sung herself for the first time on this record, and "Chelsea Morning".^[6]

The cover art, a self-portrait^[7], depicts Mitchell's home town of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada, showing the South Saskatchewan River that flows through the city, and the Bessborough Hotel, a historic railway hotel built in the days before asphalt-surface highways. In the self-portrait, Mitchell holds the floral emblem of the Province of Saskatchewan: the "western red lily" (aka prairie lily or Lilium philadelphicum var. andinum).

In 1970 Clouds won the Grammy for best folk album of 1969.

A Perfect Circle covered "The Fiddle and the Drum" as the final song of their 2004 album eMOTIVe.

Track listing

All tracks composed and arranged by Joni Mitchell

Side 1

1. "Tin Angel" – 4:09
2. "Chelsea Morning" – 2:35
3. "I Don't Know Where I Stand" – 3:13
4. "That Song About the Midway" – 4:38
5. "Roses Blue" – 3:52

Side 2

1. "The Gallery" – 4:12
2. "I Think I Understand" – 4:28
3. "Songs to Aging Children Come" – 3:10
4. "The Fiddle and the Drum" – 2:50
5. "Both Sides, Now" – 4:32

Personnel

• Joni Mitchell – guitar, keyboards, vocals, cover art
• Stephen Stills – bass, guitar

• Henry Lewy – Engineer
• Paul Rothchild – Producer
• Ed Thrasher – Art Direction

References

1. ^ Allmusic review
2. ^ Robert Christgau review
3. ^ Cleary, David. "Clouds - Joni Mitchell", AllMusic. Retrieved June 29, 2008.
4. ^ "Harmonic Palette in Early Joni Mitchell", p.173. Author(s): Lloyd Whitesell. Source: Popular Music, Vol. 21, No. 2, (May, 2002), pp. 173-193. Published by: Cambridge University Press.
5. ^ For the 1969 film Alice's Restaurant by Arthur Penn, Arlo Guthrie and Venable Herndon, Songs To Aging Children Come was re-recorded and performed by Tigger Outlaw in an arrangement for solo vocals and guitar as diegetic music during a funeral service. Mitchell's composition was seen as pivotal for the "extraordinarily cinematic" and "beautiful" character of the scene (cf. Vincent Canby, "Movies: Alice's Restaurant", New York Times, 08-25-1969). Mitchell was originally cast to perform the song herself, but declined after unsuccessful royalties negotiations with the film's producers (cf. Joni Mitchell, Biography: 1968-1970 Emerging Popular Artist).
6. ^ Joni Mitchell, Biography: 1968-1970 Emerging Popular Artist, JoniMitchell.com.
7. ^ [1]