Top Artists – Joni Mitchell

Blue on Rhino Records Reviewed

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

In March of 2007 we decided we would not be carrying the new 180 gram Rhino pressing of Blue remastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray. We noted at the time: 

Since Kevin and Steve are were friends of mine I won’t belabor its shortcomings. Let’s just say I think you can do better.

The following is an excerpt from our first successful Hot Stamper shootout from that same year. Blue has only gotten better sounding — dramatically better sounding, if I may say so myself — since then.

The copy of Blue we are offering today is one of the few that sounded good before. Now it sounds really good. It got much quieter after applying some of our new cleaning techniques, and the sound became even warmer, richer, sweeter and more transparent.

Both sides sound wonderful — rich, sweet, and delicate. The warmth, breath, and presence of Joni’s vocals take this copy to a place light years beyond the typical copy, not to mention any reissue. The guitars sound amazing, particularly on side two, and the piano has weight without hardness. There’s tons of energy and lots of ambience, plus real depth to the soundfield — you really hear INTO this copy. Try that with your Rhino LP.

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Why Own a Turntable if You’re Going to Play Mediocrities Like These?

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aja Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Blue Available Now

Hot Stamper Pressings of Aqualung Available Now

This commentary was posted in 2007 and amended later with the statement that we would no longer be ordering new Heavy Vinyl titles. The thrill was gone and there was no sign of it ever coming back. It took a while to sell off the inventory, but by 2011 we had eliminated them completely from our site.

As it happens, 2007 turned out to be a milestone year for us here at Better Records.

If you bought any Heavy Vinyl pressing from us, ever, please accept our apologies.

Now is the perfect time to find out just how much a Hot Stamper pressing can do for your musical enjoyment. (You might consider taking the enthusiastic advice of these customers regarding that subject.)

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Joni Mitchell – Clouds

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • This vintage copy boasts solid Double Plus (A++) grades or BETTER from top to bottom – the first copy to make the site since our last shootout in 2022
  • Check out the clear transients on Joni’s guitar — you can really hear her moving her hands around the fretboard and pulling on the strings
  • It’s tough to find this album in clean shape with this kind of warm, natural sound (something the new reissue is no doubt profoundly lacking)
  • Stick with the Two Tone labels if you want the highest quality sound – the later Tan labels can be good but even the best of them are many steps down in sound quality from the White Hot shootout winners
  • This would most likely include any modern repress on Heavy Vinyl, although to be honest we have never played one for Clouds – what would be the point?
  • 4 1/2 stars: “Clouds is a stark stunner, a great leap forward for Joni Mitchell. Vocals here are more forthright and assured than on her debut and exhibit a remarkable level of subtle expressiveness. Guitar alone is used in accompaniment, and the variety of playing approaches and sounds gotten here is most impressive.”

Everything you could ask for from this album is here on this copy: stunning clarity and transparency, breathy vocals, richness, sweetness, warmth, and tons of ambience.

Check out the clear transients on the acoustic guitar — you can really hear her moving her hands around the fretboard and pulling on the strings. The immediacy is mindblowing — Joni and her guitar are right there in the room with you, without being forced into your lap.

The best sounding copies of Clouds are the ones that put Joni and her guitar right there in your living room.

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Years Ago the Piano on a Copy of Blue Really Took Us Aback

Hot Stamper Pressing of the Music of Joni Mitchell Available Now

About ten years ago we played a copy of Blue that put us in the presence of a piano the likes of which we had never heard on the album before.

We found it on the track The Last Time I Saw Richard.

This is not the thin and hard-sounding instrument that accompanies Joni on every pressing you have ever had the misfortune to audition, hoping against hope that someday you would find that “elusive disc” with sound worthy of such extraordinary music.

No, this piano had real weight; it has body; and it was surrounded by real, three-dimensional studio space. No vinyl pressing we had ever played up to then has managed to capture the sound of the piano on this record any better. Exactly no copies.

For those of you with a certain Heavy Vinyl pressing in your collection, we can only say that the piano on this copy will show you everything that is wrong with the piano on that one.

The piano had no smear, allowing both the percussive aspects of the instrument and the extended harmonics of the notes to be heard clearly and appreciated fully.

Pianos are very good for testing your system, room, tweaks, electricity and all the rest, not to mention turntable setup and adjustment.

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Joni Mitchell – Blue

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • Boasting two solid Double Plus (A++) sides, this copy of Joni’s 1971 masterpiece is doing just about everything right – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Full-bodied and balanced with the kind of smooth musicality that’s not always easy to find for Blue
  • We lucked into this quiet copy during our most recent shootout, but in our experience that is something we would not expect to happen very often, but we’re glad it did in the case of this wonderful pressing
  • A Better Records Top 100 title that belongs in any audiophile music collection worthy of the name
  • 5 stars: “Sad, spare, and beautiful, Blue is the quintessential confessional singer/songwriter album. Forthright and poetic, Joni Mitchell’s songs are raw nerves, tales of love and loss (two words with relative meaning here) etched with stunning complexity…”
  • Everything changed for us in 2007 with the release of the Hoffman/Gray Rhino pressing of Blue, a record that made us ask ourselves, “Why are we selling records that we would not want to listen to ourselves?”
  • It was a kicked-by-a-mule moment for all of us here at Better Records, and I am glad to say one kick was all it took to loosen the rocks that had embedded themselves in my head

The best copies bring out the breathy quality to Joni’s voice, and she never sounds strained. They are sweet and open, with good bass foundation and transparency throughout the frequency range.

The best pressings (and our better playback equipment) have revealed nuances to this recording — and of course the performances of all the players along with it — that made us fall in love with the music all over again. Of all the tough nuts to crack, this was the toughest, yet somehow copies emerged from our shootouts that made it easy to appreciate the sonic merits of Blue and ignore its shortcomings.

Hot Stampers have a way of doing that. You forget it’s a record; it’s now just Music. The right record and the right playback will bring this music to life in a way that you cannot imagine until you hear it. That is our guarantee on Blue — better than you ever thought possible or your money back.

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Joni Mitchell – Hejira

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • Outstanding sound throughout this vintage Asylum label pressing
  • Most copies we played were too compressed or veiled to involve you in the music, but this one has the big, rich, clear sound of analog at its best that Joni’s spacey “beatnik jazz” needs to work its magic
  • It’s richer and fuller than the average copy, with notably more presence, and that will be especially true when you compare it to whatever godawful Heavy Vinyl pressing may be currently available
  • “Joni Mitchell’s Hejira is the last in an astonishingly long run of top-notch studio albums dating back to her debut… Performances are excellent, with special kudos reserved for Jaco Pastorius’ melodic bass playing… This excellent album is a rewarding listen.”

We played a ton of copies and heard a lot to dislike. Many copies have a tendency to sound phony, a case of heavy-handed EQ in the mastering perhaps. When a copy sounds glossy, it loses its natural warmth and starts to sound like any old audiophile LP. We’re ideally looking for something akin to Blue here, and not the sound you find on Patricia Barber LPs. (Gratuitous maybe, but it feels like it’s been too long since we took a swipe at that junk. But I digress…)

Plenty of copies had natural sound but no real life or presence to speak of. It’s a sound you could live with until you heard a good one, but there’s no going back once you’ve heard what the album’s really capable of. A copy like this one gives you lots of richness and warmth without sacrificing the texture to the instruments or the breath to Joni’s voice. The percussion really comes through, the bass has more weight and the immediacy of the vocals put Joni front and center, just where she should be.

If you aren’t familiar with this album, it’s a few more steps down the path she started taking on Court and Spark. The musicians include Larry Carlton and Jaco Pastorius, so that should give you an idea about the jazz-fusion direction of the arrangements. It was a fun album to get to know and on a copy like this one, it really rewards multiple listens.

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Joni Mitchell – Wild Things Run Fast

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • This copy has Joni rockin’ like you will not believe, with excellent Double Plus (A++) grades on both sides – exceptionally quiet vinyl too
  • Her last great record – fortunately for us audiophiles, it’s spacious, open and powerful with present vocals and solid bass
  • A desert island disc for me and one of the few good reasons to listen to “new” music in the 80s
  • “On her first new studio album of original material in five years, Joni Mitchell achieved more of a balance between her pop abilities and her jazz aspirations, meanwhile rediscovering a more direct, emotional lyric approach. The result was her best album since the mid-70s.”
  • This is a Must Own album from 1982, one that deserves a place in any audiophile’s pop and rock section
  • We’ve recently compiled a list of records we think every audiophile should get to know better, along the lines of “the 1001 records you need to hear before you die,” with an accent on the joy these amazing audiophile-quality recordings can bring to your life. Wild Things Run Fast is a good example of a record audiophiles may not know well but we think would benefit from getting to know better
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Joni Mitchell – For The Roses

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • With stunning Nearly Triple Plus (A++ to A+++) grades on both sides, this early White Label Asylum pressing is practically as good a copy as we have ever heard, right up there with our Shootout Winner – fairly quiet vinyl too
  • The sound is rich, warm and natural, with wonderful immediacy to Joni’s vocals and Tubey Magic for days – this is the amazing sound of Asylum in the Seventies, a subject nobody seems to talk about but us
  • One of the best sounding Joni records, on a par with Court and Spark and Blue – fine company indeed
  • 4 1/2 stars: “The lyrics here are among Mitchell’s best, continuing in the vein of gripping honesty and heartfelt depth exhibited on Blue…. More than a bridge between great albums, this excellent disc is a top-notch listen in its own right.”

This copy has real energy and dynamics that just could not be heard on most of the pressings we played. With dynamics and the warmth and richness found here, this copy will be hard to beat.

Listen to how huge the piano is. No two copies will show you the same piano, which makes it a great test for sound. Both sides have clear, present, breathy vocals, about as good as Joni can sound on vinyl, which is saying a lot.

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Joni Mitchell – Miles of Aisles

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell

  • This Joni Mitchell classic (one of only a handful of copies to hit the site in close to five years) boasts solid Double Plus (A++) sound or close to it on all FOUR sides of these vintage Asylum pressings
  • Henry Lewy brings the analog richness, smoothness and clarity he achieved on Court and Spark to the recording (particularly on sides one, two and four) – it’s some of the best live sound we’ve ever heard
  • Joni reworks some of her best-loved songs for this concert, with five tracks from Blue alone(!), and the new arrangements show us just how vital her early 70s work has turned out to be
  • “It’s a strong album of her best songs performed mostly informally… Much of the material here is beautiful, replete with the patented Mitchell tension. And a word for engineer Henry Lewy—the sound is terrific, the best reproduced concert album I’ve heard.” – Rolling Stone
  • If like us you’re a big Joni Mitchell fan, then this killer live album from 1974 belongs in your collection.

We recently had a chance to do another shootout for this album, and when you find a great copy the sound is out of this world. Not many live albums have this kind of “you are there” immediacy. Turn down the lights, crank up the volume, and you’ll be right there in the crowd as Joni and the LA Express (Tom Scott, Robben Ford, and the crew) knock out jazzy versions of some of her best material.

The brass sounds great — you can really hear the breath moving through the horns, with the all-important bite that really brings their various characters to life.

I’d be remiss not to mention the amazing bottom end on this copy. The best sides have big, note-like bass that sets an unusually strong foundation for these great songs. You don’t usually get much bass on Joni’s studio albums, so WHOMP-aholics like myself will find a copy like this to be quite a treat.

Just check out the songs on here: “You Turn Me On I’m A Radio,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” “Cold Blue Steel and Sweet Fire,” “Circle Game,” “People’s Parties,” “All I Want,” “Woodstock,” “The Last Time I Saw Richard,” and on and on. Those are many of our very favorite Joni songs, and the versions on this album do not disappoint.

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Joni Mitchell – Court and Spark

More of the Music of Joni Mitchell 

  • With STUNNING Shootout Winning Triple Plus (A+++) grades or close to them on both sides, this early Asylum pressing is guaranteed to blow the doors off any other Court and Spark you’ve heard
  • The sound is rich, warm and natural, with wonderful transparency, ambience and loads of Tubey Magic
  • Musically this is one of our favorite Joni albums here at Better Records, and probably her Best Recording as well
  • A proud member (along with Blue) of our Top 100 Rock and Pop albums – yes, it’s that good sounding when it’s mastered and pressed as well as this copy is
  • It takes us about two years to get a shootout for this album going, mostly because the Asylum vinyl of the day is a problem, and also because this album is so good it tended to get played a lot
  • 5 stars: “[A] remarkably deft fusion of folk, pop, and jazz … the music is smart, smooth, and assured from the first note to the last.”
  • If I were to compile a list of my favorite rock and pop albums from 1974, this album would definitely be on it

Court and Spark deserves to be heard with all the clarity, beauty and power that our Hot Stampers reproduce so well. If there is a better sounding album with Joni Mitchell’s name on the cover, you’ll have to prove it to us.

What you hear is the sound of the real tape; every instrument has its own character because the mastering is correct and the vinyl — against all odds — managed to capture all (or almost all; who can know?) of the resolution that the tape had to offer. (more…)