Dog Eat Dog   

So Joni's discovered the beguiling (and it seems inevitable attractions of the Fairlight computer now, how she? But don't worry all your purists, she hasn't gone electrobop all of a sudden, the synths merely add a precision and some background shading to that distinctive style of poetic confessional/analytical narrative that warms the cockles of a romantic nature.

Thomas Dolby (who seems to be spreading his considerable talents around a diverse catalogue of artists) co-produces and plays on this, on which Don Henley, James Taylor and Rod Steiger (as a mad Evangelist) also guest. Sentimental she's always been, emotional and instinctive responses are her inspiration but "Dog Eat Dog" is less of an introspective journey and more of a disenchanted vision of the Eighties by a saddened Sixties idealist.

She's ditched the recent jazz preoccupation for more classic Mitchell, meandering and full of warm inflections with a contemporary instrumentation. "Fiction" casts a sad eye over media-influenced imagery ("elusive dreams and vague desires fanned to fiery needs by sexy boys in flaming TV fires"), "The Three Great Stimulants" decries the pressures of fast-lane society while "Tax Free" is rich with sarcasm for those moral majority evangelical preachers, censors of free expression who line their own pockets in the name of Christianity.