Clouds

Released: 1st May 1969

Track Listing

Side 1

Tin Angel

Chelsea Morning

I Don't Know Where I Stand

That Song About the Midway

Roses Blue

Side 2

The Gallery

I Think I Understand

Songs to Aging Children Come

The Fiddle and the Drum

Both Sides, Now

Album from: https://www.discogs.com/user/Sound-Affects

£11.99

Clouds is the second album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell, released on May 1, 1969, by Reprise Records. After releasing her debut album, Song to a Seagull (1968), to considerable exposure, Mitchell recorded Clouds at A&M Studios in Hollywood. She produced most of the album and painted a self-portrait for its cover artwork. (The red flower is a prairie lily, the provincial flower of Saskatchewan.) Clouds has subtle, unconventional harmonies and songs about lovers, among other themes.

The album charted at number 22 in Canada and number 31 in the United States. It has been certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America, for shipments of 500,000 copies in the US. Clouds was generally well received by music critics.

From Wikipedia

Joni begins to weigh in with some career-defining classics with ‘Chelsea Morning’ and ‘Both Sides Now’. As a Brit, it’s hard to even accept that there is anywhere in the world called Chelsea that isn’t associated with flower shows, posh flash Harrys and football teams that are just very hard to like. So, Chelsea Morning does not conjure up visions of bohemian New York streets, but the King’s Road. What makes it a stand-out track? Maybe the tempo, Joni gets up a slight head of steam and as a result it feels bright and cheerful, as it should, she’s clearly in her happy place.

Both Sides Now, feels like a companion to the much later (1975) At Seventeen by Janis Ian. The songs have the same introspective feel. Joni sets being in and then out of love on either side of the titular clouds, presumably you’re flying above and then brought back down to earth when it all falls apart.

As mentioned before do find her singing style rather high strung. It’s like, it’s OK to take a breath once in a while Joni. So the delivery of the songs feels a quite relentless at times, like she’s singing under sufferance. The figurative contemplation of fear in ‘I Think I Understand’ is nicely done: ‘stepping stones or sinking sands’. The warbling delivery of Songs to Aging Children Come is hypnotic before embarking on a gentle a Capella antiwar protest with The Fiddle and The Drum.

Generally I find her lyrically opaque, but that’s almost certainly intentional and healthy. Insert yourself into what you think she’s saying. This is a lovely album and feels like it takes you to a time and place (probably Chelsea, Manhattan in 1969 I guess) that is now long gone.