This is a reissue of social-commentary songs from five albums Joni Mitchell recorded between 1985 and 1998, when she was making music of luxurious, iconoclastic complexity. No intimate acoustic-guitar confessions here. Instead you get rhythms that expand and dart, melodies that drape tuneful bits from lofty heights, singing that is remote and in-your-face. The tracks, which cohere well as a group, move with poise and slipperiness. The New Wave keyboardist Thomas Dolby appears on "Fiction," Willie Nelson sings "Cool Water" and the jazz saxophonist Wayne Shorter plays on "Impossible Dreamer," as Mitchell, throughout the set, deplores televangelists, materialism and crassness. These aredemanding, experimental songs, interested in reality yet expressed in almost unreal ways. In time, though, they yield their own sort of stark magic.

“Time to Pretend”

Listening to MGMT’s breakthrough song, one might interpret it as being about the excesses of rock stardom, but it’s actually about the duo’s pet praying mantis. Ben Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden told Rolling Stone they got the idea from the insect's jerky movements. The mantis died, but the two bandmates kept the egg sack and allowed the hundreds of eggs to hatch. “We tried to name them all, but they died after a day,” said Goldwasser, with VanWyngarden chiming in, “But the praying mantis dance inspired us.”