Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm (1988)

Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm (1988)

Peter Gabriel, Don Henley, Wendy & Lisa, Tom Petty, Willie Nelson, and Billy Idol. No, it isn’t the starting lineup of the Farm Aid charity softball team. It’s the list of guest stars on Joni Mitchell’s 1988’s Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm, released in the midst of her contract with Geffen and concomitant artistic nadir. The music of Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm never really catches fire, even with the more upbeat numbers sounding like a team of cyborgs wearily traipsing through the Dagobah System. While the album’s melodies fail to leave much of an impression, the lyrics, as luck would have it, do not to follow suit. Mitchell uses these songs as a forum to bitterly sermonize like a political shadowboxer in the midst of a primal scream. On “The Reoccurring Dream,” samples of disembodied, morally impoverished voices of television commercials sound as dated as the countless industrial bands who employed the same trick; taken out of context and presented without comment, these slogans are meant to be provocative, but the result is an Adbusters billboard masquerading as a song. The aggressively slick “My Secret Place,” a duet with Gabriel, is as tacky as it is turgid. Worst of all is the pandering, war-whooping “Lakota,” practically a minstrel piece. Albums padded with guest stars have historically indicated a paucity of ideas, but to Mitchell’s credit, that is not the case here. On the contrary: Chalk Mark In A Rain Storm is full of ideas — bad ones.