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On paper, River sounds like a match made in several versions of heaven. Legendary pianist Herbie Hancock re-imagines Joni Mitchell with his hand-picked, star-studded band--including saxophonist Wayne Shorter--in tow. Luminary guests lend vocals to a song apiece: Norah Jones ("Court and Spark"), Tina Turner ("Edith and the Kingpin"), Corinne Bailey Rae ("River"), Luciana Souza ("Amelia"), Leonard Cohen (with an unsettlingly sanguine version of "The Jungle Line"), even Mitchell herself ("Tea Leaf Prophecy"). In the event, though, a few fundamental elements go awry. Hancock plays with almost saccharine understatement throughout, and even Shorter's seminal "Nefertiti" and Duke Ellington's "Solitude" fall into the album's presiding, somnolent surface, though to a lesser degree does the instrumental version of Mitchell's "Sweet Bird." But girding, and in some measure, saving, the proceedings, the lyrics here testify to a subtler wisdom guiding Hancock's set list. The mix includes a continuum from intrepid classics to dusty, fans-only fare, but a distinct reverence for Joni Mitchell the Poet threads them together, and, in the end, this album works best as a sleepy window into one fan's giddy and particular love affair with his source material. Fans of Hancock win out. --Jason Kirk
 Customer Reviews 
Great music!
Rating: 4
I love this CD. As a Joni Mitchell fan from way back, it's wonderful to hear these songs done by different artists. Very imaginative arrangements keep the old songs sounding very fresh. I find it a very soothing CD for driving to lower my stress level.
Disappointed
Rating: 2
I loved the last Hancock CD and thought this one would be wonderful...w/ Joni's songs. A couple were enjoyable, but most tracks didn't appeal to me and I was sorry I spent the money.
Slow and boring
Rating: 2
Let's start with my prejudices: I worship most of Joni's "golden decade", from Ladies of the Canyon up through Shadows and Light. Blue is a perfect album (whatever that means) and Amelia is a perfect song.
I was excited about this album, especially since I enjoyed Hancock's Possibilities very much. But this CD is a snore. As opposed to Possibilities, where HH embraced the rockiness of his collaborators, in this recording he removes any trace of rock roots. And Joni, folkie though she be, is a rocker and a wild woman at heart - you can't remove that aspect entirely from the music without diminishing it. Energetic, pushing-the-beat guitars (whether acoustic or electric) animate almost all of her best music. To balance the melancholy of the song "River", you need a song like "This Flight Tonight", but nothing like that is present on the record.
Plus, I find the vocals to be worse than disappointing - actually, they are disconcerting. Maybe that's just my brain's resistance to the new, having been imprinting with the nuances of Joni's delivery for so many listenings. However, analytically, I think a lot of the vocals are too "singerly" - it feels like they abandon the diary-like, intimate essence of the songwriting in order to deliver "performances", and I find it unpleasant. Maybe I just can't be pleased on this score, though, so judge for yourself.
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