Album: Clouds
Recorded: Late 1968
Released: May 1969
Recorded: Late 1968
Released: May 1969
Songs / length: 10 / 36:52
Joni has described herself as "a painter derailed by circumstance" and her self-portrait skills are on display on the cover of her second LP, Clouds. Many of the greatest artistic talents of the 60s gravitated to pop music from other fields, for example Cohen (poet) and Bowie (performing arts), and this is one of the factors that accounts for the vitality of this era.
Joni had been gathering admirers in the time between her first two records, including Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, and was profiled in Rolling Stone around the time of Clouds' release. Joni's guitar talent often gets overlooked in favour of her lyrics and voice, but part of the attraction for Hendrix and Clapton was her unique open guitar tunings and instinctive playing. This is on full display on Clouds, which won Joni a Grammy for Best Folk Performance in March 1970. The album is much better produced compared to Song To A Seagull, with engineer Henry Lewy responsible for the improvement – he and Joni would continue to work together throughout the 70s.
Another factor in the album's critical and commercial success was that it contained two old favourites – Chelsea Morning and Both Sides, Now – which Joni here reclaims for herself after many covers. Chelsea Morning is a joyous expression of those strong feelings of optimism and joy that can swell up in the early stages of a new relationship, and has some great lines ("And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses"). Both Sides, Now is a masterpiece, one of those songs where it's hard to fathom how someone so young could write something so profound; I'm thinking also of Sandy Denny's Who Knows Where The Time Goes and Kate Bush's The Man With The Child In His Eyes.
Both Sides, Now is about multiple perspectives and appearance & reality, with verses that alternate between fantasy ("Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel") and reality ("But now old friends they're acting strange"). There's also a progression in the song from "clouds" to "love" and finally "life" in general, with the song resolving in the final line, "I really don't know life at all". Some of this bewilderment may have been at current events, like Martin Luther King's murder in 1968, but Joni wasn't the most political of 60s folk singers. To my ears, it sounds more like a young person experiencing the early stages of a relationship and feeling nervous, unsure and shy.
One thing I noticed listening to Clouds on various walks recently is that it has a strong sense of place compared to her first album, with New York's Bleecker Street referenced in opener Tin Angel and Manhattan's Chelsea the site of song two. This city scene is in opposition to three of the next 4 songs which all mention California (I Don't Know Where I Stand), the "valley" (That Song About The Midway) and a man who "went west for pleasure" (The Gallery). This city vs country divide reflects
a duality at the heart of the album, which seems to ebb and flow between songs of feminine self-confidence and self-doubt, especially in relation to the opposite sex.
Opening track Tin Angel is downbeat and maudlin, and at its heart is a mysterious man who seems untrustworthy and shallow. Then the clouds break with the joy of a Chelsea Morning, but the pattern continues with one of my favourite songs on the album, I Don't Know Where I Stand, which expresses so well the nervousness felt in the early stages of a new relationship. After the more assertive That Song About The Midway, next song The Gallery has a sadder atmosphere, expressing a sense of feeling demeaned as both a lover and an artist.
Many of the songs here are believed to be about Leonard Cohen. In particular, That Song About The Midway, which for me is one of the LP's deep cuts with evocative lines ("I met you on a midway at a fair last year, And you stood out like a ruby in a black man’s ear"), echoing verses in Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet ("O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear"). The line about a man "cheating once or twice" is believed to be a specific reference to Cohen.
The album also has a fantasy feel, especially the faux-medieval atmosphere of Roses Blue and Songs To Aging Children Come, but both seem a little out of place on this record (the latter was used very evocatively for a funeral scene in the film, Alice's Restaurant). The blunt anti-war politics of Fiddle & The Drum is also out of kilter with the rest of the LP. I do like the Tolkien-inspired I Think I Understand though; introducing the song at a festival in 1969, Joni said: "My favourite character, of course, was a lady wizard by the name of Galadriel. And when the travellers came to her kingdom before they had to venture off into very dangerous places and everything, she gave them a vial of light and she said 'take this vial and whenever you're in a dark place take it out'".
Highlights: Chelsea Morning, I Don't Know Where I Stand, That Song About The Midway, I Think I Understand, Both Sides Now
Album rating: B+
"I'm a painter first. I sing my sorrow and I paint my joy"
Joni has described herself as "a painter derailed by circumstance" and her self-portrait skills are on display on the cover of her second LP, Clouds. Many of the greatest artistic talents of the 60s gravitated to pop music from other fields, for example Cohen (poet) and Bowie (performing arts), and this is one of the factors that accounts for the vitality of this era.
Joni had been gathering admirers in the time between her first two records, including Eric Clapton and Jimi Hendrix, and was profiled in Rolling Stone around the time of Clouds' release. Joni's guitar talent often gets overlooked in favour of her lyrics and voice, but part of the attraction for Hendrix and Clapton was her unique open guitar tunings and instinctive playing. This is on full display on Clouds, which won Joni a Grammy for Best Folk Performance in March 1970. The album is much better produced compared to Song To A Seagull, with engineer Henry Lewy responsible for the improvement – he and Joni would continue to work together throughout the 70s.
Another factor in the album's critical and commercial success was that it contained two old favourites – Chelsea Morning and Both Sides, Now – which Joni here reclaims for herself after many covers. Chelsea Morning is a joyous expression of those strong feelings of optimism and joy that can swell up in the early stages of a new relationship, and has some great lines ("And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses"). Both Sides, Now is a masterpiece, one of those songs where it's hard to fathom how someone so young could write something so profound; I'm thinking also of Sandy Denny's Who Knows Where The Time Goes and Kate Bush's The Man With The Child In His Eyes.
Both Sides, Now is about multiple perspectives and appearance & reality, with verses that alternate between fantasy ("Moons and Junes and Ferris wheels, the dizzy dancing way you feel") and reality ("But now old friends they're acting strange"). There's also a progression in the song from "clouds" to "love" and finally "life" in general, with the song resolving in the final line, "I really don't know life at all". Some of this bewilderment may have been at current events, like Martin Luther King's murder in 1968, but Joni wasn't the most political of 60s folk singers. To my ears, it sounds more like a young person experiencing the early stages of a relationship and feeling nervous, unsure and shy.
One thing I noticed listening to Clouds on various walks recently is that it has a strong sense of place compared to her first album, with New York's Bleecker Street referenced in opener Tin Angel and Manhattan's Chelsea the site of song two. This city scene is in opposition to three of the next 4 songs which all mention California (I Don't Know Where I Stand), the "valley" (That Song About The Midway) and a man who "went west for pleasure" (The Gallery). This city vs country divide reflects
a duality at the heart of the album, which seems to ebb and flow between songs of feminine self-confidence and self-doubt, especially in relation to the opposite sex.
Opening track Tin Angel is downbeat and maudlin, and at its heart is a mysterious man who seems untrustworthy and shallow. Then the clouds break with the joy of a Chelsea Morning, but the pattern continues with one of my favourite songs on the album, I Don't Know Where I Stand, which expresses so well the nervousness felt in the early stages of a new relationship. After the more assertive That Song About The Midway, next song The Gallery has a sadder atmosphere, expressing a sense of feeling demeaned as both a lover and an artist.
Many of the songs here are believed to be about Leonard Cohen. In particular, That Song About The Midway, which for me is one of the LP's deep cuts with evocative lines ("I met you on a midway at a fair last year, And you stood out like a ruby in a black man’s ear"), echoing verses in Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet ("O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright! It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night, Like a rich jewel in an Ethiop's ear"). The line about a man "cheating once or twice" is believed to be a specific reference to Cohen.
The album also has a fantasy feel, especially the faux-medieval atmosphere of Roses Blue and Songs To Aging Children Come, but both seem a little out of place on this record (the latter was used very evocatively for a funeral scene in the film, Alice's Restaurant). The blunt anti-war politics of Fiddle & The Drum is also out of kilter with the rest of the LP. I do like the Tolkien-inspired I Think I Understand though; introducing the song at a festival in 1969, Joni said: "My favourite character, of course, was a lady wizard by the name of Galadriel. And when the travellers came to her kingdom before they had to venture off into very dangerous places and everything, she gave them a vial of light and she said 'take this vial and whenever you're in a dark place take it out'".
Highlights: Chelsea Morning, I Don't Know Where I Stand, That Song About The Midway, I Think I Understand, Both Sides Now
Album rating: B+
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