I will happily concede to those who make the case for Blue or Court and Spark as Joni Mitchell's best albums. I agree with them. But I have long felt Hejira to be underrated in the JM canon despite the considerable love reserved for some its individual songs. Oddly enough, I think of Hejira as a guitar album; that is, a guitar album in which some of the guitar parts seem to have been poured straight out of paint jars or wine bottles.

I wish I was capable of writing a companion piece to Mr. Rosenbaum's devoted simply to describing the ravishing guitar playing on "Amelia". Joni's rhythm guitar might have itself sufficed for "Amelia" as it did for "Coyote" but Larry Carlton's lead guitar goes well past what could have been merely exquisite ornamentation and ratchets the whole song up to the stratosphere. Whether evoking "the drone of flying engines" or "Icarus ascending", Carlton plays with extraordinary restraint throughout hitting harmonics and working his volume pedal with consummate precision. The overall effect is that of a kind of tightly controlled delirium. (Mention should also be made of Victor Feldman's vibes which complement Carlton's playing perfectly.)