by Josiah Hughes
Carla Gillis (Overnight, the Lord Almightys, formerly Plumtree, music editor at NOW)
Album choice: Blue by Joni Mitchell
My favourite Canadian album is Blue by Joni Mitchell. No other album has lyrics as good: vivid, gutting, all her own, poetry without pretension. Her voice, well, do I even need to explain? Her piano lines? Those unusual guitar chords? And the songwriting — so instinctual and expressive and surprising and moving.
Plus I have a pretty Canadian story about how I first heard this record. It was 1993 and my teenage rock band, Plumtree, had just started up, and some of the Sloan guys saw us play our first 19+ show in a Halifax bar. Shortly after that, Chris Murphy asked us to his house (his parents' house, actually) to make a four-track recording.
We worked on it all afternoon, and then when we were getting ready to leave, Chris took my sister (Lynette, drummer) and me down the hall to see his record collection. Lynette and I mostly only knew about Cape Breton fiddle music, the Mini-Pops and heavy metal. Chris had all this stuff we'd never heard of. The Smiths. The B-52s. Minor Threat. He got really excited talking about it all and gave us shopping bags full of vinyl to take home.
Including Joni Mitchell's Blue. Eventually I gave him back his copy, but I've never stopped listening to my own. Also Sloan's version of "A Case of You" is just terrific.
--taken from: Exclaim! (read more here)
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