Reminiscent of the arch Sophist pop of Steely Dan or their English equivalent 10cc, Court and Spark is a dense, elaborately constructed suite of songs whose breezy, sun-dazed arrangements belie the album’s predominant theme of liberation at any cost. No escape route is unconsidered, with everything from sex to suicide presented as viable ports in a gathering storm. The album’s copious background vocals, woodwinds, and saxophones courtesy of Mitchell’s jazzy new backing band the LA Express might have endeared its single, “Help Me,” to Easy Listening stations (it would become Mitchell’s only top ten hit) but the song’s lyrics are hardly elevator-appropriate. Critic Jon Landau wrote of Court and Spark that “the freer [Mitchell] becomes, the more unhappy she finds herself,” and many of the themes of Court and Spark would seem to confirm this. The Woodstock generation’s imperative was “if it feels good, do it!” but a half decade later, Mitchell’s quizzing of a lover who’s just danced with a lady “with a hole in her stocking” reads as judgmental and jealous: “Didn’t it feel good?/ Didn’t it feel good?” Themes of freedom and its complications continue on “Free Man In Paris,” about a man (David Geffen) who feels “unfettered and alive” but spends an inordinate amount of time listing the things that prevent him from being so; you get the feeling Mitchell is pointing out that perhaps the overworked mogul doth protest too much. Elsewhere, the darkly captivating “Car On A Hill” details a black evening that followed being stood up by none other than James Taylor, while the funky “Raised On Robbery” details the life of a barfly prostitute with daddy issues. The album’s glinting, lustrous arrangements imbue each deceptively doleful song with a vibrant, dreamlike aura comparable to little else in Mitchell’s catalog — or anyone else’s.