Love Has Many Faces (subtitled A Quartet, a Ballet, Waiting to Be Danced) is a box set by Canadian musician Joni Mitchell. It was released on November 24, 2014, through Rhino Entertainment. The box set compiles songs spanning Mitchell's fourth album, Blue to her most recent album, Shine (2007).
Compiled over a period of 18 months, Love Has Many Faces collects romantically themed songs from Mitchell's back catalogue, organized into four "acts".[4] Included in its packaging is new paintings and poetry by Mitchell.[5]
While the set was originally planned as one disc, creating what Mitchell referred to as an "emotional roller coaster", it was eventually expanded to four discs, allowing certain themes to be emphasized and "moods [to be] sustained".[4] This single-disc compilation was intended to accompany a ballet to be performed in 2014 by the Alberta Ballet, until Mitchell made the decision to expand the project.[6]
The set notably does not include any material from Mitchell's first three albums—Song to a Seagull (1968), Clouds (1969), and Ladies of the Canyon (1970).[6] In an interview with Billboard, she attributed the exclusion of the latter two albums to a dislike of her vocal performances on them.[6]
In a review for AllMusic, Mark Deming awarded the set four stars out of five.[2] While he felt that some fans may have been disappointed by its emphasis on less-popular and overlooked later material, he also opined that the lesser-known material "play[s] significantly better than they did on her uneven projects of the '80s and '90s", and also stated that the "lyrical strength and bold musical vision that inform [the set's] music are genuinely remarkable on nearly every tune."[2] Writing for Paste, Douglas Heselgrave gave the set a rating of 9.5 out of 10 and also commended it for featuring work from the latter part of Mitchell's career, highlighting "Chinese Café/Unchained Melody", "Love Puts on a New Face" and "Borderline" and praising them as being "as lyrically and musically interesting as anything she recorded during the first decade of her career".[8]
^Some sources list the set's release date as November 17, 2014, while others list it as being a week later November 24. Mitchell's official website lists its release date as November 24.
^On tracks from Dog Eat Dog, Chalk Mark in a Rain Storm, Night Ride Home, Turbulent Indigo, Both Sides Now and Travelogue
^Late in the set's production, Mitchell chose to rearrange the track order of disc two, leading to a disrepancy between the order listed on the set's packaging and the actual order of songs on the album. The track listing here reflects what actually appears on the disc.[10]
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