Dreamland

1	Free Man in Paris 3:03
2	In France They Kiss on Main Street 3:19
3	Dreamland 4:38
4	The Jungle Line 4:24
5	Furry Sings the Blues 5:06
6	You Turn Me on I'm a Radio 2:39
7	Carey 3:04
8	Big Yellow Taxi 2:17
9	California 3:51
10	Help Me 3:24
11	Nothing Can Be Done 4:51
12	Dancin' Clown 3:51
13	Come in from the Cold 7:30
14	Amelia Orchestral Version, 2002 6:46
15	For the Roses Orchestral Version, 2002 7:29
16	Both Sides Now Orchestral Version, 2002 5:46
17	The Circle Game 4:51

Barnes & Noble

While The Beginning of Survival compiles Joni Mitchell’s politically charged work from late in her career, Dreamland’s canvas is wider, encompassing all phases of Mitchell’s diverse canon. The 77-minute compilation, selected by the artist herself, overlaps slightly with 1996’s Hits collection, but it offers a better representation of the complexity and variety of the peerless singer-songwriter. The early signature tunes are here, of course: “Carey,” “Big Yellow Taxi,” and “Help Me” in their original versions; “For the Roses” and “Both Sides Now” in their recent orchestral re-creations. But Dreamland also makes room for more adventurous choices, such as the rhythmic “The Jungle Line,” the stark “Furry Sings the Blues,” and the pulsing “Nothing Can Be Done.” Only one of the 17 tracks hasn’t aged well: The poppy “Dancin’ Clown” suffers from the slick and busy production typical of the late ‘80s. But that’s a quibble -- throughout her career, Mitchell’s uncompromising vision, whether as a lyricist or a composer/arranger, allowed her songs to stand outside the mainstream even while she was influencing it, and Dreamland is an excellent single-disk overview of a massive, and massively important, body of work. Steve Klinge

All Music Guide

Dreamland is the second volume in Joni Mitchell's self-compiled series of "theme" retrospectives. The first, issued on the Geffen label, was entitled The Beginning of Survival. It focused on songs that dug deep into social, cultural, political, and environmental themes, as "commentaries on the world in which we live." Dreamland was compiled from her Asylum, Reprise, and Nonesuch years and focuses, for lack of a better term, on the jazzier side of her catalog musically, including songs with lyrics are all highly imagistic in their makeup. Most are dealing with love and life in the process of moving through it. From "Free Man in Paris" and the title track, to "In France They Kiss on Main Street," "Come in From the Cold," "Help Me," and of course, "You Turn Me on I'm a Radio," these songs turn the tide for the listener from the place of observing love to the terrain of being caught up in it, where everything is hyperreal and the senses are heightened. The other, tempered side of love is offered with the orchestral version of "Both Sides Now" and "For the Roses." But there are other songs, too, like "Furry Sings the Blues," which paints a nocturnal landscape of the blues past, as visited by the protagonist in dreaming, or travel as an other reality in the orchestral reading of "Amelia," or in "California." In each instance, the view of reality presented is distorted, either by memory, the acute hypersensitivity of the heart, or by the notion of displacement. All of these strains weave a new terrain from Mitchell's oeuvre. The package is, once again, a delight, featuring a fine appreciation by Cameron Crowe, and reproductions of ten of Mitchell's paintings. While the material here has all been released before, as has always been the case with Mitchell's work, context is everything. This bold new context offers a startling view of the artist as auteur. Thom Jurek