JONI MITCHELL
Taming The Tiger (Reprise)
Rating: 5 out of 7
By Chris Morris

   Quite a gal, our Joni--one who can kick off a number with the declaration, "Kiss my ass, I said," and begin another with the time-honored cliche "It was a dark and stormy night" and still manage to keep things fresh. It’s a long way from that golden Chelsea morning of Mitchell’s youth, but she is, if anything, a more engaging and bracing musician now than she was as every teen boy’s sensitive heartthrob in the late '60s. The particulars of her style have solidified recently--most songs feature her flanged guitar, flecked with horn embellishments and highly subdued rhythm accompaniment--but she’s still capable of working new warpage into her sound (hear the almost industrial ambience of the lead track, "Harlem In Havana"). And her sensibility continues to be spikey: Take a listen to the wrath she reserves for the record industry on the William Blake-inspired title track (which also appears, for no apparent reason, as an instrumental). A hell of a woman.