Joni Mitchell: Wild Things Run Fast

A YEAR before her 40th birthday, the great romantic of rock music undoes her locket once more. Three years have passed since Mingus and the world has moved fitfully on: but in Mitchell's universe the identical concerns have to be invoked and picked over, obsessively, again and again. I've partnered in this waltz so many times I'd like this to be a valedictory look – except Wild Things Run Fast seems such a melancholy dance, so lacking in what Mitchell can be so good at, that I'll have to leave with a heavy heart, not a cleansed one.