Shadows and Light was recorded during Mitchell's 1979 summer tour and used equipment of the Record Plant in Sausalito.[3] The recordings of "Furry Sings the Blues", "Dreamland", and "God Must Be a Boogie Man" were taken from PA mix cassette recordings.[3] Much of the material comes from Court and Spark (1974) onward, the only exceptions being "Woodstock" and the cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love".
Reception
Commercial performance
Shadows and Light was a moderate commercial success, reaching number 38 on the Billboard 200.[4] "Why Do Fools Fall in Love" was released as a single and peaked at number 102 on the Hot 100.[4]
Critical reception
Reviews for Shadows and Light were positive. Writing for Rolling Stone, Stephen Holden called the album "a surprise and a triumph" and considered it "one of a handful of great live rock albums".[5] Holden praised Mitchell's backing band as "the finest ensemble that [she] has worked with", and called her vocal performance "exhilarating".[5] He went on to list the performances of "Edith and the Kingpin" and the title track as "the record's biggest stunners", feeling that the former's "spare live setting" worked to "uncover a mythic yarn of seduction and corruption" and praised the latter's pairing with "Why Do Fools Fall in Love".[4]
In a retrospective review for AllMusic, Vik Iyengar praised the renditions on the album to be more energetic than their studio counterparts; however, he also felt that many live versions were "not different enough" than the original studio versions.[1] In a piece commemorating the album's 40th anniversary, The Economist called the album "unjustly overlooked" and also highlighted its title track, stating that Mitchell's collaboration with the Persuasions gave the song "a new, organic richness".[6]
