Agree with your assessment. I, too, often think while I'm listening to one of the great songs on this album (Slouching, Sire of Sorrow, Sex Kills, Hejira, Chinese Cafe, Dawntreader) "How can the music press not be appreciating the astonishing greatness of this cut?".
I agree ,too, with your comments on her voice. Here is an instrument that can follow the most complex melodic lines without ever even a hint of unsureness or struggle to maintain pitch. (And she can still do this live as we heard on the last tour) . There's no need to make allowances for some ravaged vibrato or need to fake difficult passages by speaking or shouting as many singers resort to as years pass. And the emotional expressiveness is as wide ranging, maybe even more wide ranging, than it ever was. And the arrangements are not, as I first feared, 'Joni-lite'. They are complex, exciting, interpretations of Joni's extremely unusual musical palette. I for one find it exhilerating to hear some of Joni's strange chords played by many new instruments. And the songs that call for rage really benefit from the huge orchestrations. Finally, I agree that if she tours this album, it will be one of the greatest concert experiences of my life.
