OK just to be fair I took out WTRF and listened to it twice consecutively last night laying on the floor relaxed with earphones. After much consideration my original opinion stands and heres why. First of all, the good. Chinese cafe may be one of Jonis all time best songs but by listening carefully it this time I noticed that her voice is somehow badly mixed. The musical tracks are just awesome on this song. It is the penultimate LA production example. But somehow the vocals are mixed flat (very flat) as if they forgot to do any effect to them to put their texture on the same level as the instrumental tracks. Her voice is normally so good it would be hard to ruin it or make it sound bad but its almost as if her voice is an afterthought. It sounds like shes afraid to stretch it out (or worse) Cant stretch it out. Could it be she pulled a "stills" and blew it out somehow or was it being inflicted upon by things dripping down the back of her throat. Extreem speculation no doubt but unless the vocal track was somehow stripped of effects accidentally or in the CD conversion it is hardly anywhere near as good as on some of her other albums. Then there's all sorts of disjointed sections in the songs themselves. Soaring hard rock crunch chords followed by jazz shuffle sections as if they recorded a majestic rock intro only to "change their mind" in production approach in the next 15 second section. WTRF ends up like a movie trailer wrenching from one style to the next one feeling to the next. Artistic license or loss of cohesive production flow or loss of concentration. Or did they (like others I worked with) simply "forget" where they meant to go. I have difficulty thinking that this was Joni at her best. Notice how during her career she is able to string lengthy songs and chains of songs together seamlessly and all of a sudden heres this album and there are whole sections that just dont fit literally in the same song. And it happens on almost all the songs. Its really an odd album from that standpoint. There are some other possibilities but they are not as compelling. One, she may have been so much in love with a big L that she just wasnt into the concentration level during this project. She got all melty goo goo about big Larry during the entire project gawking at him furtively, heart apounding and aflutter, that she was just distracted (possible)as all get out OR she woke up one morning and said to herself (picture the parents in Home Alone when they realize the alarm hasnt gone off)"Oh My God" my contract says I must finish a new album by this thursday; we better get to the studio and oh goodness I havent written any songs yet, Larry, wake up, can you get some hired guns to all do about 45 seconds of their best riffs and we'll splice them into some songs, wheres my note pad, my kingdom for a melody....". That in fact is what the album sounds like to me. The last possibility is she was totally bored with the "lets try to do rock in LA" schtick and was constantly flippantly trying to enmesh LA sound cool jazz takes smack into shimmering rock sections, because she does that quite a bit on this album, and it just didnt work (of course IMHO). I went back and listened to a few of the ones I was on the fence about like WTRF, Ladies Man, Youre so Square (ultimately possibly the worst song Joni has ever done Id forgotten about it entirely). Of course everyone has likes and dislikes and is entitled to their opinion but this was and remains a strange effort. Would someone please pass me the Turbulent Indigo and For the Roses so I can get back on my feet. Hurl your darts objectors, Im so square I dont care. Now tell me that isnt suck-o poetry. marcel deste
