Thirty seconds into Sufjan Stevens’ upbeat, jerky and amiably pointless interpretation of ‘Free Man in Paris’ here, an unavoidable question pops up in the listener’s minds. Why? Not just because Joni Mitchell herself is recording and releasing material again (after saying she was finished with the business three years ago), but because the whole thing feels so lacklustre and uninspired – the opposite of the artist it attempts to praise.
The trend for tribute albums is more than a decade old now, yet is still to produce anything more than meandering, uninspiring or just daft reinterpretations. Some artists seek the kudos of association with greater talent, but the likes of Prince (who sounds like Elton on laughing gas during a cheerily syncopated version of ‘A Case Of You’) and Emmylou Harris are hardly in need of a reputation boost. The stuff that works, meanwhile, is the stuff that keeps it simple; Sarah McLachlan by sounding just like Mitchell and Björk by sounding just like Björk when you liked her ten years ago. Maybe we should really just be grateful that a coffee-table take on the ubiquitous ‘Big Yellow Taxi’ is conspicuous by its absence.
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