Looking back at the eighties, it’s hard not to feel some degree of sympathy for David Geffen. His brand new label, launched in 1980 following his dismissal from Warner Brothers, seemed cursed to inherit flagship 60s and 70s artists just as they were losing the plot (see Neil Young, John Lennon, Elton John). Joni Mitchell’s run of albums on the label is mostly consistent with this hex: Of the four albums Mitchell released during her nine-year tenure with the label, only the last, 1991’s Night Ride Home, could be considered in any way estimable. Mitchell’s Geffen debut, 1982’s Wild Things Run Fast isn’t the worst of the batch, but it is frustratingly uneven, short on good ideas and long on cheerless diatribes and garish production choices. It is not, however, without a few gems: “Chinese Café” is a minor masterpiece, and one of Mitchell’s most enchantingly autobiographical songs; it segues, cleverly, into “Unchained Melody.” “Ladies Man,” too, is worthwhile, with Mitchell proving that Kate Bush and Peter Gabriel weren’t the only ones who knew their way around a Fairlight. Throughout, husband Larry Klein’s flexuous, superhuman-sounding bass playing almost rivals former bassist Jaco Pastorius — no small feat. Most of the album, however, finds Mitchell’s reach uncharacteristically exceeding her grasp. At the time, Mitchell admitted to feeling a musical kinship with The Police, and Wild Things Run Fast does, in places, seem indebted to that band’s particular brand of palpitant dub pop. But Mitchell has almost always been better served by inspirations existing outside, rather than inside, the musical realm. Affectation is beneath an artist like Mitchell, and Wild Things Run Fast proves this again and again; could the generic cock-rocking guitars heard on the title track and “You Dream Flat Tires,” for instance, sound any more ridiculous? Wild Things Run Fast has its defenders, but this MOR identity crisis is best remembered not as a chapter in the Joni Mitchell story, but a footnote.