Popular music history is full of train songs from Boxcar Blues to Chatanooga Choo-Choo and Joni Mitchell continued the tradition on this cut from her 1974 album Court and Spark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgE6lDYz7I0
It’s a wistful tune – it is Joni Mitchell after all – but it rides on a gently funky chassis, suggesting the forward movement of a railway carriage. “I’m always running behind the times” she begins “…just like this train/ shaking into town with the brakes complaining…”
Like many songs from this period of Joni’s career there is a jazzy touch, with playful horns punctuating the track, along with wisps of electric guitar, which sweep past as if glimpsed from a window.
As ever, Joni’s lyrics are excellent. Observations of the waiting room include an “Old man sleeping on his bags, women with that teased-up kind of hair, kids with the jitters in their legs and those wide, wide open stares”.
All of this is woven into a back story of romantic ambivalence. It becomes clear Joni is not setting out on an adventure, but heading back to her man. “Oh, sour grapes…I think I lost my heart” she sings ruefully as she anticipates a future of settled domesticity “watching your hairline recede, my vain darlin'”. Freedom versus commitment.
She worries that being in love has become too much of a sacrifice “Jealous lovin’ll make you crazy, if you can’t find your goodness, cos you lost your heart”. But she’s still seduced by the sensory pleasures of travel, with “these rocks and these cactuses going by, and a bottle of German wine to drink”
The supporting stars of this recording are the rhythm section – drummer John Guerin and bassist Wilton Felder – who move from a metronomic rhythm through various levels of clickety-clack funkiness, suggesting the varying pace and sonic rhythm of a train journey – without actually speeding up or slowing down.
Throughout the song, Joni sounds both innocent and world weary, playful and philosophical, holding those long notes that seem to melt her uncertainty into joy. Vulnerability is her strength.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YgE6lDYz7I0
Tom George 