Also known as Song To A Seagull, Joni's David Crosby-produced debut is simpler and more stark than the meticulous tapestries of her later and more celebrated work. It showcases the fragile Sixties style Crosby called "art-folk": hushed and demure, courtly and mannered. The young Joni sometimes sounds cloyingly virginal, and the flowery mooncalf affectations grate, but her unique sense of rhythm and melody is already blooming, most beautifully on "I Had A King", "Michael From Mountains" and "The Dawntreader". Raw and clear, Joni Mitchell is the sound of arguably the 1970s finest songwriter warming up, her approach, musical and lyrical, coming into focus, her vision ghosting past the boundaries of the folk form. --Taylor Parkes