Maps of Music

The Hissing of Summer Lawns (1975)

Where the lyrics of The Hissing of Summer Lawns take you, and where it was really made.

The cover paints a group of men carrying a snake over the Beverly Hills suburbs, and Mitchell's own house is marked in blue within it.

Key places

Recorded at A&M Studios (1975)

Recording site A&M Recording Studios — The recording location is listed as A&M Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles. The point marks the studio building. Google Maps · Apple Maps

How to get there: See the map for directions.

Album story

Overview

• The Hissing of Summer Lawns: seventh studio album by Canadian singer-songwriter Joni Mitchell
• Released in November 1975 on Asylum Records
• Continues the jazz-rock direction of Court and Spark with more unconventional and experimental material
• Features backing from members of jazz-rock groups L.A. Express and The Crusaders
• Additional contributions from James Taylor, David Crosby, and Graham Nash
• Introduces Moog and ARP synthesizers to Mitchell's work for the first time
• Experiments with sampling
• Lyrics focus on women's experiences with patriarchal norms, male dominance, suburban life, culture, and the music industry

Background

• The slick jazz-pop sound of Court and Spark (1974) is pushed into more adventurous territory
• Some tracks fuse jazz and shimmering avant-pop
• The album also features an ARP synthesizer and African drums
• The Jungle Line uses a looped recording of percussion by The Drummers of Burundi
• In a 1983 interview, Mitchell explained that she had taken a Burundi warriors passage, turned it into a loop, and placed a black cultural poem under it
• Her interest in world music is seen as foreshadowing the later work of Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon

Recording

• Recorded at A&M Studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles
• Mitchell produced the album and mixed it with engineer Henry Lewy
• Ellis Sorkin served as assistant engineer and Bernie Grundman handled mastering
• Shadows and Light consists of many overdubs of Mitchell's voice and an ARP String Machine

Cover

• As with many of her albums, Mitchell created the cover art
• The painting shows a group of men carrying a large snake, superimposed over the Beverly Hills suburbs
• Mitchell's house is shaded in blue

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Tracklist

Sources: musicbrainz.org

Artist

• Canadian and American singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, and painter, born Roberta Joan Anderson in 1943 in Fort Macleod, Alberta.

Formation

• Began singing in Saskatoon nightclubs, then performed in Calgary and Toronto before moving to the United States in 1965.
• Her songs were first recorded by other singers, which helped her sign with Reprise Records.
• Debut album Song to a Seagull was released in 1968.

Career

• Blue (1971) is often cited as one of the greatest albums of all time.
• Court and Spark (1974) moved toward jazz influences and became her best-selling album.
• Collaborated with jazz musicians including Jaco Pastorius, Herbie Hancock, Pat Metheny, and Charles Mingus.
• Won eleven Grammy Awards and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
• Returned to live performance in 2022 at the Newport Folk Festival after a 2015 brain aneurysm.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

Reception

At release

• Rolling Stone's Stephen Holden wrote that the album's lyrics were impressive but the music was a failure
• Holden said the jazz-rock style of the backing players completely opposed Mitchell's romantic style
• Robert Christgau called the musical accompaniment the most ambitious of her career
• Christgau criticized Mitchell's choice of session musicians
• Christgau found the sound effects strengthened the lyrics only on The Jungle Line and Don't Interrupt the Sorrow
• Critics at the time compared it unfavorably to Court and Spark

Reappraisal

• Music writer Howard Sounes called it Mitchell's masterpiece, an LP to stand alongside Blood on the Tracks
• Prince, a lifelong fan of Mitchell, praised the album and in a 1985 Rolling Stone interview called it the last album he loved all the way through
• Pitchfork's Jessica Hopper noted that some listeners first felt the album as a betrayal
• Hopper wrote that it lacks the rhapsodic reputation of Blue but is unquestionably one of Mitchell's finest albums
• The record's reputation grew in stature over the years and it later became one of her most acclaimed works

Records

• Reached number 4 on the US chart, Mitchell's last top-10 album
• The only single, In France They Kiss on Main Street, reached number 66 on the Billboard Hot 100
• Certified gold by the RIAA on 4 December 1975
• Nominated at the 1977 19th Grammy Awards for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance
• Ranked number 217 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000)
• Ranked number 258 in Rolling Stone's 2020 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time

Sources: en.wikipedia.org · fr.wikipedia.org

Trivia

• Mitchell is credited with the first commercially released song to include a sample, The Jungle Line, built on looped percussion by The Drummers of Burundi
• The album sleeve shows the African theme of The Jungle Line, with dark-skinned people carrying a large snake
• The snake image and the African theme were both embossed on the original vinyl cover
• Mitchell's own house is marked in blue on the right side of the front cover
• Harry's House / Centerpiece frames the jazz standard Centerpiece by Harry Sweets Edison and Jon Hendricks
• Sweet Bird's lyrics may also refer to Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth

Sources: en.wikipedia.org

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