She retired from songwriting to her cats and her painting long ago; so we travel back to 1979 for this live film of the elusive Joni Mitchell, shot under Californian skies at the Santa Barbara County Bowl. By then she had left behind her winsome folk songs and earth mother image in favour of a sophisticated jazz-rock sound and a vampish rouge-and-lipstick look that actually suited her rather well. There’s no Woodstock or Both Sides Now, all the songs coming from her more musically dense and lyrically complex mid-period albums Court and Spark, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, Hejira and Mingus. They’re given flesh and sinew by Mitchell’s best band including the late, great Jaco Pastorius on bass, the guitarist Pat Metheney and the saxophonist Michael Brecker, while she herself is in mighty voice, more jazz diva than acoustic troubadour. The performances are intercut with footage from old films, ranging from the newsreel images of Amelia Earhart that accompany Mitchell’s song about the doomed aviator to the smouldering scenes of James Dean, used to evoke her own 1950s youth. It makes Shadows and Light far more than just a straight concert performance, though with Mitchell in such golden form, that would have been enough.

DVD extras Tour photo diary

Nigel Williamson

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