Turbulent Indigo (1994)

Longtime Joni Mitchell fans should interpret the title of her 17th album as ''Blue''-with-its-dander-up. With its screeds against doctors, lawyers, religion, ''the ulcerated ozone,'' and — most wrathfully — Jackson Browne, whom she convicts as a woman beater, Turbulent Indigo is full of verbal turbulence. The melodies, however, are among her most dreamily pretty. Sometimes this contrast cancels out the emotion in a song, but more often, it makes Mitchell's controlled fury all the more potent. B+