Night Ride Home begins with the sound of crickets and Mitchell likening a Hawaiian dusk to a surrealist Fourth of July. It’s a beautiful start to one of Mitchell’s most empathetic and assured latter-day entries. It also captures Mitchell in particularly fine songwriting form: “Cherokee Louise” takes a distressing tale of child abuse and renders it sharp, vivid and beautiful; the elegant “Come In From The Cold” features one of Mitchell’s most striking vocal performances; and “Passion Play (When The Slaves Run Free)” and “Two Grey Rooms” almost reach the vaunted peaks of Hejira for atmosphere and ethereal complexity. Night Ride Home isn’t perfect — “The Windfall (Everything For Nothing)” is petty, and “Slouching Towards Bethlehem,” on which Mitchell pretentiously sets a Yeats poem to music, overreaches — but it’s Mitchell’s last truly great album before settling into a career of comfortable elder statesmanship, a career which, based on albums like Night Ride Home, she has more than earned.