Joni Mitchell, “Shine” (Hear Music)
Joni Mitchell is angry – angry enough about a lot of things to storm back into the music business after she had walked away from it in 2002.
Melancholy has been replaced with feistiness and combativeness. “Shine on the fishermen with nothing in their nets/ Shine on rising oceans and evaporating seas/ Shine on our Frankenstein technologies” and so on, she scolds on the title track. “Money makes the trees come down,” she condemns in “This Place.”
Mitchell even does a bouncy, edgy reprise of her 1970 hit “Big Yellow Taxi” (“Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you got ’til it’s gone.”) The songs on “Shine,” for the most part, dwell in the spare, experimental jazz-inspired atmosphere of her later albums.
None of the material on the album is among Mitchell’s best. Some of the songs (almost rants) are overkill. The rhythmic “Hana,” the lyrical “If” – based on the Rudyard Kipling poem – “Night of the Iguana” and “Bad Dreams” stand out, though. Still, in a world of money jingles and emo sap, it’s a relief to hear a great songwriter returning with a fire in her belly. Released Sept. 25.
Rob Lowman, Los Angeles Daily News
KT Tunstall, “Drastic Fantastic” (Virgin)
The title of Scotswoman KT Tunstall’s second CD – not to mention the white minidress, matching go-go boots, and silver-spangled guitar she’s sporting on the cover – would seem to announce that something fabulously exciting is about to happen.
Alas, it is not to be.
Not that “Drastic Fantastic” is a disappointment, exactly. The follow-up to Tunstall’s slow-breaking hit debut, “Eye to the Telescope,” again plays to her strengths, working a Sheryl Crow-Sarah McLachlan folk- pop axis, albeit with a bit more of a glossy sheen.
From the acoustic bounce of “Hopeless” to the genuinely catchy, coo-coo-cooing “I Don’t Want You Now,” “Drastic Fantastic” is uniformly pleasant and mildly captivating. But it never lives up to either of the words of the title. Released Sept. 18.
Dan DeLuca, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Iron & Wine, “The Shepherd’s Dog” (Sub Pop)
Iron & Wine’s third full-length album, completes the transformation hinted at in two EPs from 2005, “Woman King” and “In the Reins,” the latter a collaboration with Calexico.
What began as a solo bedroom project by Floridian Sam Beam featuring little more than his hushed, murmuring voice and acoustic guitar has blossomed into a full-blooded band, and this album is full of quiet textures: cello and fiddle, marimba and other hand percussion, steel guitar and sitar, accordion and organ, harmony vocals from Beam’s sister Sarah.
While “The Shepherd’s Dog” never rocks out – the New Orleans-flavored “The Devil Never Sleeps” comes close – its attention to rhythm sets it apart from the gossamer poetics of early I&W.
Check the dublike interludes in “Wolves,” for example. Still, the focus is on Beam’s intimate vocals. Like Nick Drake or Elliott Smith, he commands through his reserve, and his parablelike songs merit attention. Released Sept. 25.
Steve Klinge, The Philadelphia Inquirer
