Joni Mitchell - Hejira (Ultradisc One Step LP) / 45RPM 2LP Mobile Fidelity

“Joni Mitchell is the only artist who could have made ‘Hejira’!” said the legendary singer-songwriter decades after the release of her legendary album. The work, ranked 113th on Rolling Stone's list of the greatest albums of all time,

is, according to Mitchell, a narrative about her inner turmoil at the time and is also intended as an unconventional tribute to freedom. Most of the songs were written by Mitchell on a trip across the US, which she embarked on shortly

after the end of her relationship with drummer John Guerin. The album title refers to the Islamic “Hijra,” Muhammad's journey described in the Koran. Compared to her previous, folk-heavy albums, jazz elements dominate on “Hejira”

– sonically influenced by the outstanding bassist Jaco Pastorius, who contributed to four tracks – adding musical spice to the sparse, beautiful, meditative arrangements, floating harmonious pop, gentle rock and Mitchell's sensitive vocals.

“Hejira” is at once observant and personal, expansive and insular, cheerful and poignant, spanning a sea of human conditions and emotions. It addresses drifting, isolation, pleasure, place, time, and environment – with a strikingly poetic

discourse. The Canadian has dealt with such themes before. But never before as on “Hejira”, whose liberating aura suggests a rejection of traditions and better alternatives. The music itself, with the exception of the crooner ballad “Blue Motel Room”,

dispenses with conventional structures and choruses. Of course, Mitchell's intimate vocals and abstract guitar parts take center stage, but there's no getting around the visionary range of guitarist Larry Carlton and Pastorius' fretless bass on “Hejira”:

both musicians literally fuse with the characteristics of the songs, which often seem to emerge from nowhere.

“Hejira”, ranked 133rd on Rolling Stone's list of the “Greatest of All Time,” went gold shortly after its release in the fall of 1976 and is now finally receiving the audiophile attention it deserves for the first time thanks to Mobile Fidelity's remastering from the

original tapes: The double LP (45 RPM) is pressed on 180-gram SuperVinyl by Fidelity Record Pressing using the sonically superior UltraDisc-One-Step process and plays with benchmark detail, tonality, immediacy and clarity. Strictly limited to 3,000 copies,

the box set impresses with reference-worthy immediacy, airiness and presence, allowing Mitchell's dense chains of words, stream-of-consciousness phrasing and forward-moving dynamics to appear in a completely new light. The instrumental contributions of

her top-class accompanying musicians, including John Guerin, Max Bennett, Tom Scott, Neil Young, Victor Feldman and Abe Most, also come into their own with greater transparency and three-dimensionality. Visually, the collectible MoFi UD1S set is every bit

as impressive as the sound: the LPs, packaged in foil-stamped jackets with faithful reproductions of the original artwork, are housed in a deluxe slipcase – including the unforgettable album cover: a collage of 14 different photos that Mitchell has combined into

one image using a “Camera Lucida.”

Title

LP 1

Side A
1.    Coyote
2.    Amelia

Side B
3.    Furry Sings The Blues
4.    A Strange Boy
5.    Hejira

LP 2

Side C
6.    Song For Sharon
7.    Black Crow

Side D
8.    Blue Motel Room
9.    Refuge Of The Roads