1. Joni MitchellCourt And Spark

Why did you pick so many Joni Mitchell albums?

I guess I’m going through something of a phase… that’s lasted about six or seven years now. I think I just wanted to give some brutal direction to our conversation and I thought that Joni would be a great overseer of that. I like her totally misguided desire to take what she found in jazz music and put it into songs that you sing, I’m into that desire… even if I know it led to nothing but heartbreak and misery for her.

Court And Spark is a record I know better than most and it seems like, as far as pop music goes, the perfect marriage of these different worlds. And it’s her at her most relaxed, the most comfortable version of her voice. There’s a song or two off Poison Season where I had songs like those Court And Spark songs in mind – this comfortable jazz-led boogie rock with poetic words.