“Her tunes wander and veer; they manage their own beauty, bringing it forth at variable intervals. She wanted to create what she called “plateaus” for her lyrics, spans that she could prolong or cut short depending on the demands of her words and the emotional content that they ferried. In “A Case of You,” a song about Leonard Cohen, the lyrics turn on two reported fragments of speech. Both contain literary allusions; Mitchell was drawn to Cohen’s bookishness:
Just before our love got lost you said
I am as constant as a northern star and I said
Constantly in the darkness
Where’s that at?
If you want me I’ll be in the bar”