Joni Mitchell - Don Juan's Reckless Daughter [2LP]

Don Juan's Reckless Daughter is Joni Mitchell at her most daring, a sprawling double album that pushed her songwriting deep into jazz and percussion-driven rhythms, presented here remastered across two LPs.

Released in 1977, it followed Hejira and found Mitchell chasing ideas wherever they led, with Jaco Pastorius's singing fretless bass at the heart of the sound. Wayne Shorter adds soprano saxophone and Chaka Khan lends backing vocals, while a battery of percussionists including Airto Moreira, Don Alias and Manolo Badrena turn stretches of the record into rhythmic explorations. Critics were divided at the time, but its reputation has only grown.

Paprika Plains is the centrepiece, a sixteen-minute epic for piano and orchestra that fills an entire side and drifts between memory and dream. Jericho revisits a song she had already performed in concert, now refreshed by Shorter's soprano, while Dreamland is a hypnotic percussion piece with Chaka Khan's voice woven into the mix. Otis and Marlena adds a wry, cinematic vignette.

It is a record that asks for your full attention and repays it many times over. For anyone who loves Hejira or Court and Spark, this is the bold next chapter in all its expansive, adventurous glory, and a high point of her most fearless decade.