Whether or not "Coyote" is really about Shepard, this story-song is definitely about a fling Mitchell had while traveling across country. Although she acknowledges from the start that she and her beau are from different worlds, she gives in to his advances. Yadda yadda yadda. They see a farmhouse ablaze and decide to go boogie at a roadhouse. Blah blah blah. Her hunk o' man candy stares at his plate of eggs and the waitress's legs at a diner. Mitchell packs up and hits the road again. No hard feelings. The end.
The triumph here is not only that Mitchell makes this steaming heap of "me-gen" infidelity sound so damn poetic--with her fluty alto painting vivid tableaus and sepia-colored metaphors of wild dogs chasing prey in the whisker wheat. It's that the musicianship is so mesmerizing.
Everything is pure syncopation and rhythm, with Mitchell and Larry Carlton strumming along, tossing off these jazzy, cluster chords that Bill Evans or Dave Brubeck would appreciate. Each strum has this unique sense of spaciousness, creating a soundscape that evokes a ribbon of lonely asphalt, snaking its way through a vast wasteland under mammoth open skies. Then you feel Ms. Bobbye Hall's congas insistently driving the rhythm like pavement seams rumbling beneath the tires of your car. But ultimately it's Jaco Pastorius's thumps and "plings!" on his fretless bass that literally provide the heartbeat of the entire affair. In fact, there's something about that heartbeat that brings out the humanity and sense of longing in the song in spite of Mitchell's nonchalant "no regrets" lyrics. Sonically, it clues you in that this isn't a song about celebrating a one night stand and a vagabond life; it's a frank confession about needing a home and needing to be needed.
One of Mitchell's best, I think.
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