Joni Mitchell - The Hissing of Summer Lawns - Acoustic Version (1975)

Some months ago, I posted an acoustic version of Joni Mitchell's 1974 album "Court and Spark." Basically, that was the album when Mitchell switched from recording solo acoustic to recording with a band, so that version imagined that she just kept going with her original acoustic style. Recently, guest poster Mike Solof expressed interest in posting an acoustic version of her 1976 album "Hejira," which he likes quite a lot. Before, I post that, I thought it would make sense to create and post an acoustic version of her album after "Court and Spark" but before "Hejira," which is "The Hissing of Summer Lawns." So here it is.

For decades, there was a widely available bootleg called "Demos of Summer Lawns." It consisted of acoustic demos of most of the songs that would go on "The Hissing of Summer Lawns," though not all of them. Then, in 2023, the box set "Archives, Volume 3" was released. It contained most of the demos from the bootleg, though not all of them, and had previously unknown one.

I've put this together mostly using the demos from the box set. I rearranged them into the exact same order as the original studio album. However, I had trouble with a couple of songs. I couldn't find any alternate version of the song "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" anywhere. So I took the album version and edited it with the MVSEP program to remove the drums. That's why that's the sole song with "[Edit]" in the title. The demo of "Sweet Bird" wasn't included in the box set, but I was able to use the one from the Demos bootleg. For "Shadows and Light," I used a live bootleg version taken from the Rolling Thunder Revue tour. 

Finally, there's a bonus track of sorts. "Dreamland" was not actually included on "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" album. It wouldn't appear on one of her albums until "Don Juan's Reckless Daughter" in 1977. However, a stripped down version was recorded in the spring of 1975, at the same time as most of the other demo versions here. So I included that one here as well. It has some drums on it, but it's still mostly acoustic.

In my opinion, "The Hissing of Summer Lawns" is an underrated album. If you don't like the increasingly jazzy style Mitchell was evolving into at this time, perhaps you'll like this acoustic version instead.

This album is 42 minutes long.

01 In France They Kiss on Main Street (Joni Mitchell)
02 The Jungle Line (Joni Mitchell)
03 Edith and the Kingpin (Joni Mitchell)
04 Don't Interrupt the Sorrow (Joni Mitchell)
05 Shades of Scarlet Conquering (Joni Mitchell)
06 The Hissing of Summer Lawns [Edit] (Joni Mitchell)
07 The Boho Dance (Joni Mitchell)
08 Harry's House (Joni Mitchell)
09 Sweet Bird (Joni Mitchell)
10 Shadows and Light (Joni Mitchell)
11 Dreamland (Joni Mitchell)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/aX8N9FYX

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/HMnoSnKqYxygRR8/file

For the cover art, I wanted to find something similar to the official cover, yet slightly different. I Googled the name of the album, and found an advertisement for it in a magazine. Indeed, it was similar but different. Note for instance the church on the far left in the line of buildings, which isn't in the official cover. There's also a line of text quoting a song lyric near the people carrying the snake. The ad was black and white, but I colorized it a bit to better match the official album, and I added the text at the top.