joni mitchell - hejira (hybrid sacd)

Name: joni mitchell - hejira (hybrid sacd)
SKU: UDSACD 2275
Price: 39.50 EUR
Availability: InStock

Shipping time:
4 days + Delivery

4 days + Delivery

Stock: 2 pieces

39,50 EUR

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Description

Description

MEDIUM HYBRID SACD
CONDITION sealed
MINI LP GATEFOLD CARDBOARD COVER M mint
BOOKLET M mint
SERIALNUMBER Yes
LIMITED Yes
MISCELLANEOUS Stereo, playable on all CD Players !
MUSICIAN HOMEPAGE jonimitchell.com

Joni Mitchell – vocals (all tracks), rhythm guitar (1–7, 9), electric guitar (8)
Larry Carlton – lead guitar (1–2, 4, 7), acoustic guitar (8)
Bobbye Hall – percussion (1, 4–5)
Jaco Pastorius – fretless bass (1, 5, 7, 9)
Victor Feldman – vibes (2)
Max Bennett – bass guitar (3, 6)
John Guerin – drums (3, 6, 8–9)
Neil Young – harmonica (3)
Abe Most – clarinet (5)
Chuck Domanico – double bass (8) Chuck Findley - horns (9)
Tom Scott – horns (9)

coyote - 5:01
amelia - 6:01
furry sings the blues - 5:07
a strange boy - 4:15
hejira - 6:42
song for sharon - 8:40
black crow - 4:22
blue motel room - 5:04
refuge of the roads - 6:42

Joni Mitchell is the only artist who could've made Hejira

The legendary singer-songwriter said as much when discussing the album decades after its release

Yet that fact seemed obvious from the moment the gold-certified effort streeted in fall 1976

An adventurous travelogue, probing narrative, and offbeat homage to freedom, Hejira remains an inimitable entry in the catalog of recorded music — a spare, gorgeous, meditative series of sonic vignettes comprised of floating harmonic pop, cool jazz, soft rock, and sensitive vocal elements that beckon feelings of motion, discovery, and self-examination

Marking the first time the revered effort has received audiophile treatment on disc, it's one of six iconic 1970s Mitchell records Mobile Fidelity is reissuing on vinyl and SACD

This collectible reissue reproduces in breathtaking fashion the tones, textures, and craftsmanship that help Hejira function as the equivalent of a liberating trip down an open road with nothing but blue sky, natural landscape, and fresh air in the immediate vicinity

Passages bloom, carry, decay as they do amid an acoustically optimized environment

The reference-grade immediacy, airiness, and presence put in transparent perspective Mitchell's dense strings of words, stream-of-conscious-like phrasing, and unhurried albeit forward momentum

Likewise, the instrumental contributions of her A-list support musicians — a cast that includes L.A. Express members John Guerin, Max Bennett and Tom Scott, plus Neil Young, Victor Feldman, and Abe Most — emerges with stellar clarity and dimensionality

While Mitchell, whose intimate vocals and abstract guitar parts center everything, Mobile Fidelity's restoration of Hejira further reveals the visionary breadth of guitarist Larry Carlton and bassist Jaco Pastorius

Though heard on only four tracks, Pastorius' fretless bass epitomizes the fluid, subtle, flexible, roomy, and shape-shifting characteristics of songs that often appear to transpire out of nowhere akin to the formation of a puffy cumulus cloud overhead

In sync with Mitchell's voice, Pastorius' fusion hovers and floats, suspended in a fog you want to deeply inhale

The "grace notes" Mitchell desired on Hejira can now be heard in full

Ditto the luxurious tapestries of alinear lines, fills, and supplements unreeled on Carlton's six-string

Housed in mini-LP-style gatefold packaging, this SACD also allows you to examine the unforgettable Hejira album cover — a pastiche of 14 different photos Mitchell used a Camera Lucida to assemble into one image that's anchored by a portrait of her in a stoic pose — and the interior shots of Mitchell skating on a frozen Wisconsin lake wearing a pair of black skates, black shirt, and fur cape

The notion of skating, feeling an awakening wind whipping against your face, and losing yourself to the surroundings are extremely apt for Hejira, which Mitchell wrote after a sequence of trips and relationships prompted her to reflect on the complicated conflicts between independence and marriage, success and satisfaction, duty and desire — and, more specifically, "the cost of being a woman"

The Canadian native delved into such themes before

But never as she does on Hejira, whose liberating, running-away aura doubles as another of Mitchell's rejections of tradition as well as a suggestion of a better alternative

At once observational and personal, expansive and insular, cheerful and poignant, Hejira spans a sea of human conditions, emotions, and circumstances

It addresses drifting, isolation, pleasure, place, time, and surroundings with strikingly poetic discourse matched with music that, save for the crooned ballad "Blue Motel Room," forgoes conventional structures and choruses

The jazz-based arrangements, marked by scaled-down percussion and all manner of bent, rounded, and unsettled notes, hint that Mitchell has no exact destination in mind

Excursions such as the moody "Furry Sings the Blues," funky "Coyote" and edgy "Black Crow" throw open previously locked doors to possibility and journey

They signal it's time for a welcome departure from norms and the past, one that leads to a heightened sense of clarity and perspective

Or, as Mitchell said upon choosing the album title, it's time for "leaving the dream, no blame"

RECORDING 1976 at A&M Studios, Hollywood
ENGINEERING Henry Lewy
LABEL Asylum
RE MASTERING Rob LoVerde
RE RELEASED 2025
AVERAGE RATING 4.75 Stars out of 5
MADE IN USA
STYLE Pop / Rock / Folk / Light Jazz
AVAILABLE as long as inventory stock