Historically, "Night Ride Home" has been called Joni Mitchell's return to form. It was her first album in the 90's and the aural atmosphere surrounding the songs seemed like a welcome relief from her turgid 80's material. I have been and remain an avid fan; even so, "Dog Eat Dog" and "Chalk Mark in a Rainstorm" are not particularly favorite's of mine. So when "Night Ride Home" appeared it seemed as if Joni (and Larry, of course) had begun to feel that an uncluttered approach to her music was best. And they were right! "Night Ride Home" is just another example of Mitchell's stunning range as songwriter, guitar player and singer. The title track is a lovely ballad, all the more enjoyable since it reflects on a small cherished moment between Joni and Larry. Her reworking of Yeates' "Slouching Toward Bethlehem" is terrific: her plaintive guitar work is surrounded by thunderous percussion and siren wails. It's sense of the coming 'revelation' is ominous. And who -- but Joni Mitchell -- would have the nerve (and good sense) to change Yeates' original text? "Come In From the Cold" offers Joni's slightly middle-aged perspective on romance & relationships. Gone is the doomed folkie from "Blue" which kind of cast her as the "Sarah Bernhardt" of the '70s; now she assumes a more mature and realistic (while not overtly cheery) stance on matters of the heart. Two songs regarding Joni's childhood also appear: "Cherokee Louise" recounts the story of a sexually abused girlfriend while "Ray's Dad's Cadillac" concerns itself with slightly less weighty matters (a la "In France They Kiss On Main Street"). Ironically, despite "Cherokee Louise"'s repugnant theme, Mitchell's guitar work and percussion make the song a toe-tapper. "Night Ride Home" laid the groundwork for Mitchell's next masterpiece, "Turbulent Indigo". It is a fine collection of songs from a true master: strong, vibrant and immensely enjoyable.

No one made more impact on the sixties and early seventies folk-rock scene with her deeply personal songs than Joni Mitchell. So, when she returned to the same style and presentation after a long absence in the early nineties with this album, it certainly galvanized our collective consciousness by provocatively presenting a number of songs that are both representative of and yet quite superior to a lot of what she had done before. Here Joni presents a song writing that is both mature and serious, and yet showing her mischievous side with a few songs like "Come In From The Cold", which is probably the most accomplished and popular of the tunes collected here.

Yet we linger over other songs as well, such as the title cut of "Night Ride Home", which is a memorable glimpse into her private and personal world with her husband in some moments alone out on the road. A lot of similar cues to her aversion to being a public personality are here; the hope for quiet, the reference of "no phones till Friday", etc. So, while this is no outrageously autobiographical tour of the state of her psyche as some previous albums had been, it does represent a return to her habit of speaking loudly and clearly about a number of personal and social issues she has in mind. Another memorable effort is "Passion Play", with its provocative verses and interesting arrangement, and one must mention a quite lovely "Nothing Can be Done". All of the songs make for a worthwhile listening experience.

Of course, no one as observant and perceptive as Mitchell can help but make shrewd side remarks at the inanity of social circumstance or political happenstance along the way, and we laugh along while accompanying her on this soulful journey through the risky, crater-filled landscape of life in the nineties. This album marks a return to her classic form, and is an outstanding effort by one of the most captivating, surprising, and articulate talents in modern music. From the numbers mentioned above to her treatment of everything from original songs to a stunning interpretation of William Butler Yeats famous poem "The Second Coming", this is filled with numbers you will be humming and singing along with. You will find yourself listening to it and shaking your head knowingly as you recognize her wisdom as she sings her way into the millennium. Enjoy.

Like most avid Joni fans I first came across her work through Blue and Court and Spark - only later starting to collect her later albums too. Having now bought all her albums apart from Dog Eat Dog I can honestly say that this is one of her very best, and I totally agree with the other reviewer who said this is an underrated record.

With the possible exception of Ray's Dad's Cadillac, every song is a gleaming gem, the wonderful vocals, powerful lyrics and simple acoustic guitar arrangements sounding so much better than the over-produced stuff Joni produced in the 80s. The title track alone is worth the price of the CD and the haunting Come In From The Cold has to be one of Joni's most beautiful songs ever. I would (of course!) give Blue and The Hissing Of Summer Lawns 5 stars and although I totally love this album and think it is one of Joni's best 3 or 4 albums, it isn't quite as revolutionary as the Hissing.

Scared people started leaving Joni in droves after Dog Eat Dog in '85. (These were probably the same people who didn't buy Mingus or Hejira, but that's another essay). So some people missed out on the very good Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm in '88, and seemingly more missed out on this classic piece of pop music, Night Ride Home.

Someone asked Joni in an interview what this album was about, and she shot back, "middle-aged love songs!" As if she had to defend making such an album. But these songs are about so much more than that. Slouching Toward Bethlehem is musically inviting, but chilling in its lyrics. Windfall is anything but a love song - "Because Elvis gave them cars/you think I'm cheap," she says (amazingly) to someone who may have been spending too much time on her couch. The title track, however, fits perfectly into her broad description - it might even take place on a hayride.

There is a (I hate to use the word) coziness to some of the proceedings. Wayne Shorter is used (as usual) as her melodic alter-ego, but here it seems to work more effectively than on any other album -- mostly because the arrangements are lush without being busy or over-orchestrated. He blends in more with his surroundings, which serves to accentuate Joni's vocals.

Blah, blah, blah...buy it for the title track, for Slouching Toward Bethlehem, and for Two Grey Rooms. But upon repeated listening, you'll find that you'll prefer to listen to the whole glorious thing, start-to-finish. Again and again.

Standing alone, removed from the context of the entire body of her work, Joni Mitchell's "Night Ride Home" deserves to be regarded for what it is - a stunning array of ten beautiful melodies, embellished by lavish harmonies and counterpoints, all delivered through the medium of her intoxicating, confident and finely honed voice. The vocals are set in a spare but artfully arranged instrumental background of acoustic guitar, bass and percussion, with just a dash of keyboards and winds where appropriate. The lyrics cover a mixed bag of topics, with social commentaries (incest, greed, economic exploitation and an adaptation of a Yeats poem about the apocaplyptic consequences of the loss of moral centers) alternating with recurring "Fountain of Youth" reminiscences of magical romantic moments past. Whether Mitchell is a worthy poet or painter may be debated by poets and painters - but there can be little doubt about her status as the outstanding lyricist in the world of popular music. This album is all Joni - the melody writer, the singer, the musician, the lyricist and the person.

But "Night Ride Home" is perhaps even more interesting within the context of her journey as a musical artist. In her early albums, the young Mitchell developed the basic skills - "words and music" writing, intrumental and confessional - that would culminate in her first masterpiece. "Blue" was puctuated by exquisite melody writing, on top of her own musical accompaniment. There was little vocal harmony, and only a smattering of instumental help (except for a little James Taylor and Stephen Stills). The question was, where could she go from there? "For the Roses" was a fine album, featuring a bit more accompaniment and even two successful injections of traditional orchestration, but it could not exceed Blue, and therefor could not equal it (since it came on its heels).

Gradually, Joni made the committment to expand her musical horizons, mixing Tom Scott's 'semi-jazz' into her equation in the commercially successful "Court and Spark" and even more intensely into her experimental "Hissing of Summer Lawns". The latter album was less popular, and no doubt confused many of her fans (including this one) and most music critics, unable to keep up with the pace of her musical advancement. "Hissing" had some misses, but it would be received far better by fans and critics as time passed, and proved to be the transition to her second masterpiece, "Hejira".

Hejira, released only five years after Blue, represented almost a complete transformation in musical style from Blue. The soaring, expansive melodies of Blue had yielded to more tightly knit, almost narrative melody and lyrical lines in Hejira, and the musical accompaniment - a sort of fusion jazz punctuated by Mitchell's unique stylistic variations on the guitar - took center stage. The confessional lyrics were largely gone - while still personal, their emphasis reflected more the emptiness of one in search rather than joy of new love or the anguish of heartbroken separation. With this transformation, Mitchell lost some old followers (in my case, it was twenty years later that I woke up to the album, finally able to absorb the beauty of the instrumentation) but gained some new ones who were more jazz-oriented.

Yet Mitchell was not yet finished with her move in the direction of jazz-oriented exploration. With "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" and "Mingus", she lost most of her original following altogether, even though some of us trusted that she was exploring areas she needed to in order to complete her development as an artist, and realized that it was we who could not yet keep up.

The 1980's brought the Larry Klein era, and a move to consolidate the many skills acquired into a new style with a new direction, but still rather heavily jazz-oriented. I have not yet warmed up to the three albums from that decade - perhaps one day I will - but one cannot help but respect Klein's work and its positive influence over time on Mitchell's music.

With "Night Ride Home", however, there is a return to the emphasis on traditional, fluid melody last seen in "Blue", but this time with much more sophisticated harmonies and counterpoints, and more polished guitar arrangements. And with "Night Ride Home", Joni has for a second time answered the post-Blue question "where do I go from here?". She could not hope for a second masterpiece in the style of Blue, but she has found a way to improve upon Blue significantly in some respects, and that is really something.

"Turbulent Indigo" won the Grammies, but I suspect they were in part a belated recognition of the overlooked "Night Ride Home", which had enabled even Joni's earliest fans to welcome back into their lives the greatest artist of the late 20th century in the English-speaking world.