Joni Mitchell – ‘The Hissing of Summer Lawns’
No one encapsulated the Californian folk scene like Joni Mitchell, who used her incredible talent for storytelling to create songs that have endured for decades. Mitchell wielded her powerful voice to craft narratives about love, heartbreak, friendship, freedom and nature, as well as providing plenty of social and political commentary along the way.
With 1975’s The Hissing of Summer Lawns, the singer’s seventh album, Mitchell leaned into her experimental musical influences with synths and jazz painting the soundscapes. Compared to albums like Ladies of the Canyon, The Hissing of Summer Lawns is much more ambitious in its sonic palette, although this has proved divisive. Yet, the unconventional instrumentation works terrifically alongside Mitchell’s voice, providing greater intrigue and weight to her lyrical explorations. With frenetic jazz bursts and drums played by the African percussion group Drummers of Burundi, the record feels expansive and eclectic, highlighting Mitchell’s ease outside the realms of piano and acoustic guitar.
Lyrically, Mitchell is on top form, often focusing her musings on feminine identity, city life and artistry. With every song, Mitchell uses her words to craft lucid stories which immerse the listener in a specific moment in time. The accompanying instrumentals help to bring these small snapshots to life, resulting in a beautiful and thought-provoking collection of songs.
Opening with ‘In France They Kiss on Main Street’, Mitchell depicts a young girl growing up under the influence of rock and roll’s emergence in the 1950s. With lines like “Feel so wild you could break somebody’s heart/ Just doing the latest dance craze,” the singer encapsulates the intensity of growing up, with simple actions amplified tenfold under the haze of new experiences. “Gail and Louise in those push-up brassieres/ Tight dresses and rhinestone rings, drinking up the band’s beers,” Mitchell sings, crafting a vivid portrait of youth through her observations. The song is accompanied by the occasional electric guitar riff, cleverly uniting form and content.
The following track, ‘The Jungle Line’, takes a slight sonic shift to welcome a sample of the Drummers of Burundi’s percussion, which creates a slightly ominous tone as Mitchell plays a Moog synthesiser alongside. The song stomps forward with a musical intensity like nothing Mitchell had released until this point. Yet, the charging potency of the track works well; it’s one of the record’s most memorable tracks, the demands of its drums forcing us to listen.
Female agency is a central theme of the album, which was released during the midst of second-wave feminism. On ‘Don’t Interrupt the Sorrow’, Mitchell’s pleasant acoustic guitar floats along with steady percussion, allowing her voice to take prominence. She argues for the independence of women, using traditional religious imagery to illuminate the historical subordination of women by men.
Elsewhere, Mitchell explores the relationship between a husband who essentially locks his wife away in a fancy house, keeping her as a decorative object rather than an autonomous being. An underlying terror lies at the heart of the song, with the motif of “the hissing of summer lawns” suggesting an unknown threat – potentially a snake – which evokes further religious imagery. The husband puts up a “barbed wire fence,” retaining his ownership over his wife through “just a little blood of his own” on “every metal thorn.” The symbolism commands the song’s message with power, which culminates in the wife choosing to stay trapped in the relationship, possessing a twisted sense of love for him regardless. Mitchell’s vocals sweep through the background in harmony with gentle saxophones and trumpets, which stand in contrast with the brutal sadness of the narrative.
An album highlight comes in the form of ‘Harry’s House/Centerpiece’, which emphasises the isolation of modern life, commenting on the effects of industrialism and capitalism on people, especially women. While the husband thinks of his wife’s body only in retrospect, preferring her youthful “body oiled and shining,” he soon recognises that he cannot live without her, clinging onto the remnants of their relationship with the realisation “’Cause nothing’s any good without you/ Baby you’re my centrepiece.” Musically, the song has an otherworldly quality, aided by mesmerising trumpets, keys and guitars, which begin to break down with the relationship described by Mitchell, resulting in a stunning, unstable jazz display.
The Hissing of Summer Lawns is a terrific album that sees Mitchell expand her repertoire, unafraid to experiment with bolder sounds. Her lyricism remains tight and contemplative, telling stories with strong social commentary weaved throughout. From the Gone With the Wind-inspired ‘Shades of Scarlett Conquering’ to the gentle acoustic number on the slippage of youth, ‘Sweet Bird’, Mitchell’s seventh album proves her prowess as one of music’s most impressive writers.
