Joni Mitchell
Song to a Seagull

Refined debut album for Joni Mitchell. She’s twenty-five, and in that 1968, she was certainly not an unknown, at least within the emerging folk-rock circuit. She had an important “godfather” in David Crosby, who here “improvised” as a producer and convinced Reprise Records to let her record a full LP of her own songs—which was not at all common in those days—structured even as a concept album in two parts: side A, titled “I Came To The City,” contains songs that deal with urban themes, often dark or repressive; side B, “Out of the City and Down to the Seaside” (that is, Fuori dalla città e giù verso il mare), is instead a celebration of nature, with more positive and outgoing tracks.

The result is good, but in my opinion, not entirely thrilling. I find that, for a debut artist, there is perhaps an excess of ambition in wanting to do everything by herself—not just the songwriting, but also the solo performance on acoustic guitar or piano (except for Stephen Stills’ guest appearance on bass for «Night In The City») and even the “flower power” style painting of the cover. In this way, her talented writing—both musically and lyrically—ends up sounding a bit convoluted in the verses and somewhat flat in the sound rendering of the songs (after all, Crosby is not a true producer). Luckily, the song lyrics are clearly printed in the inner folder, as they would otherwise be hard to understand for a non-native speaker.

And then there’s almost a twist of fate with the graphic part: when it was time for printing at Reprise, no one noticed that the beautiful Joni had “drawn” the album title in three lines with a flight of seagulls («Song To A Seagull», in fact), but it’s only noticeable from a distance; thus, with the title cropped and almost unreadable, for some time the album was known only by the much more visible name of its author—which is, after all, pretty common for debut releases.

But coming back to the substance: her distinctive soprano voice is already quite recognizable (for reference, you can easily compare «Michael From Mountains» in her version and—in rete—in the almost simultaneous recording by Judy Collins); all the songs express a highly refined poetry, far from folk clichés; the harmonic solutions are often delightfully unusual, such as the crackling piano—almost honky-tonk style—on «Night In The City» paired with the yodel-like trills in the chorus; and what truly makes the difference is the enchanted beauty of tracks like «I Had A King», «Song To A Seagull» and «Cactus Tree», which break from tradition to herald the Joni Mitchell–Lady of the Canyon she would become.

So, not an easy album, but indispensable for Joanie’s fans and “recommended with reservations” for everyone else.