The naïve formalism of Joni Mitchell’s debut album, Song To A Seagull, is easy to forgive in light of the string of masterpieces to come. In fact, despite its hopelessly dated folk sound, the album telegraphs many of the aesthetic and stylistic preoccupations that would go on to haunt the perimeters of every subsequent Joni Mitchell album. Consider that the album is tellingly divided not into “sides,” but “parts,” suggesting that Mitchell’s affinity for conceptual frameworks was already well established. The lyrics, too, already portray her as more fatalist than fantastic, favoring narratives and firsthand accounts to metaphorical woolgathering. Mitchell has always written from the inside out, and not the other way around. Her songs caution that wisdom and enlightenment are hard-won rewards, and the attendant struggles to attain these cannot be expressed in empty rhetoric or platitudes. Think about it: Has there ever been a pop star less reliant on aphorisms? Still, Song To A Seagull is an album that’s more enjoyable to discuss than to listen to. David Crosby’s workmanlike production is thankfully inconspicuous, though his Hollywood hippie persona can certainly be heard cruising and thrumming beneath the surface on some of the better songs here, like the lulling “The Dawntreader” and the gorgeous, Sandy Denny-sounding “Sisotowbell Lane.”