Consumer Guide Album

Joni Mitchell: Miles of Aisles [Asylum, 1974]
The two Joni-with-guitar/piano/dulcimer sides of this live double are impossibly tedious even though she's learned to sing songs that were beyond her half a decade ago--if she was so crazy about folkie-purist records she would have gone that way in the studio originally. The two new songs are mere bait--they wouldn't be on the album if she'd recorded them before. And the two sides with the L.A. Express establish her as the most gifted of the new folky-jazzy singers--I mean, Kenny Rankin should just forget it. B−