Customer Reviews
Life becomes a Travelogue - By: Alias Grace, 05 Jun 2008 
This album was released eight years before I appeared on this earth. I am now 23 years old, & this album means a lot to me. Joni Mitchell's lyrics are effortlessly beautiful, & this album has rapidly taken over 'Blue' as my favourite Joni Mitchell album. It's more than music, there's something timeless & ethereal about this gem that grows & grows with every listen. It's very difficult to describe the effect of the landscapes, emotions & images that are conjured up here. The best way I can describe it is as a musical journey. It's about travelling around the world only to find yourself. The lyrics & the music are fluid & unrestricted, conveying this wonderful essence of travel & discovery.
Sometimes when I listen to this album I wish I was growing up at the time when it was orginallly released. When music was actuallly music. Some modern day singer/songwriters such as Tori Amos & Bjork may come close to turning their music into an art form, & have some success. But none of them can surpass Joni Mitchell. Buy & have your eyes opened to what music can be.
In a highway service station
Over the month of June
Was a photograph of the earth
Taken coming back from the moon
And you couldn't see a city
On that marbled bowling balll
Or a forest or a highway
Or me here least of alll
You couldn't see these cold water restrooms
Or this baggage overload
Westbound & rolling taking refuge in the roads...
Comfort In Melancholy (nevertoolate #001) - By: The Wolf, 31 Mar 2008 1976 saw the release of an album which continues to hold a solid
place among the most enjoyed & revered albums in The Wolf's
collection.
Never a stranger to confessional songwriting, in 'Hejira' Ms Mitchell
arrived at what perhaps remains the pinnacle of her creative career.
These nine songs reach across the void between the deeply personal & a kind of sublime universality.
Songs of lost love; fragile hope; the ever-present tension between
committment & flight; the deep desire for some kind of transcendent
reconciliation with what it might be to be wholly human.
The contribution of her fellow musicians, notably bassist Jaco Pastorius, is almost organicallly integrated into the breath & bones of this extraordinay music.
Ms Mitchell's voice reaches a warmth of tone & maturity unmatched by her peers. Her flirtations with jazz have not been wasted.
We find them here lovingly absorbed in performances of commanding emotional power & integrity.
Great music was never better than this.
'Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light'.
Dylan Thomas
Her Best - By: Tobias W. R. Warren, 09 Feb 2008 I wont go into details as there are some fine reviews here. I bought this album the day it was released having a few earlier works in my collection. Joni caught my mood & I became very thoughtful. She leads one to contemplate the meaning of our short existence in this work. It is simply poetry with music- a unique sound. In a way, this stuff prepared me for a spiritual path. Find your own answers. Music cannot preach. Thanks Joni.
The greatest album of all time - By: Timothy Holmes, 30 Dec 2007 I always ask friends & colleagues what disc they would take to a desert island, if they had to choose just one. Then they ask me in turn...and I say "Hejira, by Joni Mitchell, of course...what else".
It has everything. I first heard it in 1977. I bought it, coz it said Joni Mitchell on the cover, & I had heard what a brilliant songwriter she is...apart from that I had no idea what the album was gonna be like. What a great piece of luck that was...
I still listen to Coyote even now & get a thrill. Amelia & the title track still move me to tears. But the masterstroke is the last song, "Refuge of the Roads". Listen to the achingly beautiful words here! So moving.... & Joni's singing is so expressive. I have listened to this album tens of thousands of times since I boutght it way back then...it still moves me 30 years later.
A must in any collection!
songs for sharing - By: Finbar the looney, 01 Dec 2007 When you're at sea in a cloud of fog the most heartening thing to see is a beacon of light that shows the way forward.this is one such album,Joni paints sound like carravagio paints pictures, beauty stripped bare, with a certain amount of vulnerability & the overalll effect is majestic & alll encompassing.
The album is full of vision "Song for Sharon""Refuge of the road""Hejira"
are stunningly beautiful pieces of music,that tell tales of her native Canadian upbringing so well that you feel you have known the areas that she sings about even though you have never been there.
The musicianship is, as usual masterful,the bass playing being of particularly high standard alll of which means that the Songs for sharing on this album ensure that this is a wonderful record.
