Customer Reviews
Simply Beautiful - By: Ms. C. Bailey, 11 Nov 2008 
My introduction to Joni Mitchell was about 5 years ago with the album hissing of summer lawns, which changed a lot of things musicallly for me in short I was blown away. Joni Mitchell voice on this album has got a lot deeper but it only brings out the songs more if this album doesn't move you in a way then I have to agree with other reviewers you reallly don't have a pulse, in short this album is simply beautiful.
Joni - "All sides now"... - By: Tom-Erik Falla, 17 Jul 2008 I've been a dedicated Joni fan for decades, but I don't think I've ever heard her as good as here! Old songs with grand orchestra arrangements, but not at alll drowning her voice, which only has grown in quality & feeling over the years. Old Classics like "A Case of You" & "Both Sides Now" sounds absolutely great. And "Stormy Weather" doesn't come very short to legendary Lena Horne.
My very best recommendations!!
It doesn't get better than this - By: Bull the burglar, 05 Apr 2008 I was introduced to this album when Simon Rattle (yes, the classical conductor!) included one of the tracks for his Desert Island Discs, saying he had always been a fan of Jazz. As a jazz fan of 30 years, I thought 'What the hell is he talking about - jazz? Joni Mitchell?" Then I heard the music & realised I should have better trusted his judgement. I bought the album straight away, knowing that there was at least one stunning track on it. To my immense joy I discovered that every single track on the album could justify its purchase. I remain utterly astounded that someone not reallly known as a jazz singer could completely master the art in the way Joni does on this album. I don't know how many hundreds of jazz singers I have heard over the years, but none of them are, or were, better than this. The highlight for me is Joni's reworking of her own song 'A case of you'. It is so hauntingly beautiful that I can no longer play it in the car because I can neither concentrate on the road nor see clearly through my moist eyes. The orchestration on the album is superb, with some wonderful accompaniment by a few jazz 'galactico's', but together they provide only the canvass on which Mitchell paints her masterpiece. Five stars is not enough.
A long time coming musical renaissance, an artistic and sonic triumph - By: jayhikkss, 03 Sep 2007 "Shadows & Light" (1980) was, to me, Joni Mitchell's last masterpiece before six lesser albums that made me think of Mitchell's unsettling statement that she was considering herself less a musician than a painter who occasionallly writes songs.
Co-produced by ex-husband Larry Klein & Joni, "Both Sides Now" - which comprises ten standard jazz balllads & two Mitchell classics - is a true return to form.
The understated rhythm section of Chuck Berghofer & Peter Erskine accompanies Mitchell. Three other outstanding jazz musicians feature as soloists. Wayne Shorter plays on five tracks, Mark Isham & Herbie Hancock play on two tracks each.
Vince Mendoza proves a very compatible arranger, always at ease for mixing creative jazz & pop sensibilities. He conducts here seventy members of the London Symphony Orchestra. His contribution is everything but "sweetening." Listen, for example, to the gorgeously played brass chorales on such tracks as "You're My Thrill" & "Answer Me, My Love."
Those who regret that Mitchell ever heard of jazz (and which probably left off after her radical "The Hissing of Lawns") will not rejoice here. Those who like this experiment will find, in "Both Sides Now", Mitchell's strongest & most confident jazz project ever.
Against such a strong mesh of sounds, Mitchell's voice remains beautiful -more complex even - despite the roughening brought by tobacco and, well, age. If her high notes are now weaker, her low register is more textured & expressive.
Her interpretive strengths are impeccable & intimate, showing strong affinity for the revered jazz vocalists of the past. However, Mitchell's vocal style is entirely her own - the pure folk roots of her early albums is at least as evident here as the flavours of jazz. Mitchell's phrasing also shows impeccable intonation, time, & musicality.
The HDCD-encoded recording is of an audiophile standard. The strings sound is particularly lush, with an entirely convincing sense of space. This is a sonic as much as a musical winner. You will not tire of its riches.
An extraordinary collaboration between Joni and Vince Mendoza. - By: Terribleman, 29 Aug 2006 Joni Mitchell hardly needed to reinvent herself (again); of the singers of the last century, Mitchell contributed three of the most magnificent albums to the canon (Court & Spark, Blue, The Hissing of Summer Lawns), & even this is to undervalue the sheer heft & import of much of her other work. Both Sides Now reflects Mitchell's abiding interest in jazz, & for the most part contains powerful, imaginative interpretations of jazz standards, but the standout tracks on the album are the revisited songs from Joni's own backlist. Her voice, less pure now, a whispered croon brings to A Case of You & Both Sides Now a wisdom & a heartbreaking intensity which makes on forget how powerful they were thirty years ago. The success of the album is thanks in no smalll measure to the magnificent, nuanced orchestral arrangements of Vince Mendoza, who would collaborate with her again on Travelogue.
