Joni Mitchell’s “Hejira” flows freely with vivid jazzy cuts that tell stories of time spent on the road. Her skilled use of elastic melody, evocative lyricism and ability to turn the bleak into stirring tales incite an urge to roam freely alongside her.

The Canadian singer-songwriter established herself as a folk legend after a string of magnificent albums, including her 1971 opus “Blue,” during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s. “Hejira” follows Mitchell on various treks across America in the late ‘70s, most memorably one on Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue in 1975. While much of Mitchell’s music has always referenced her escapades (think: “I met a redneck on a Grecian isle”), the songs on “Hejira” hone in on the wide openness of journeys across America in a cooler, more wintery manner. 

The album can be thought of as a musical bookshelf, with the two bookends (the first few and last few songs) keeping the rest of the shelf’s contents from falling down and straying too far from uniformity. Mitchell is known for her oftentimes long, rambling prose that in part contributes to her greatness as a brilliant wordsmith, but can also lose the attention of those who may have spent a little too much time consuming digital media growing up. 

“Coyote” opens the record with mid-tempo guitar strums, telling the tale of a ladies man who can’t help but “stare a hole in his scrambled eggs” while dually “watching the waitresses’ legs.” Mitchell lets her words ramble on for just long enough before reeling it back in with the familiar mention of her metaphorically four-legged subject. Her storytelling immerses the listener so well that you can almost feel the syrup-covered menus at the diner table as you listen.

The middle of the album, from about “A Strange Boy” to “Black Crow,” partially strays from focus as Mitchell forgoes tightly knit melodies for expounding sonnets that reject the contemporary pop hook. These musical “bookends,” feature loose sonic space, but make their way back to familiar refrains to comfort the listener on their voyage toward the record’s pièce de résistance, “Refuge of the Roads.”  

Many of the songs, “Furry Sings the Blues” in particular, sound like they’d be played over black coffee and burnt toast in a small town diner. They are ambiguous enough to background the moments we often deem dull, and easy enough to hum along to when Mitchell occasionally utilizes a hook. The difference between the songs on “Hejira” and any other nondescript restaurant standards is, of course, the lyrics. 

This record offers two different listening experiences. The first lets the loose melodies wash over the mind and conjure up images of drives on the open road to your relatives house in the middle of nowhere. The second allows the music to leave a deeper impression, this time focusing on the lyrics that remind you of sitting in bleak hotel rooms, staring out the window into the wooded distance.  

Plenty of establishments with wondrous and whimsical names are mentioned — whether it be a “Blue Motel Room,” “Sweetie’s snack bar” or the “cactus tree motel.” Mitchell makes these references to physical spaces to further emphasize her thoughts as they relate to her surroundings. Most everyone has likely experienced feelings or thoughts being changed based on physical surroundings, whether good or bad. On a record so focused on travel, she uses these references to signify pit stops along her trip. 

But before the listener winds up at the final track, they check in for a stay in Mitchell’s “Blue Motel Room.” She croons about old feelings hanging around and comically likening her relationship with her partner to that of America and Russia’s cold war. The quiet instrumentation and her high-pitched delivery paint the picture of agonizing contemplative moments — sitting at the foot of her bed, cigarette burns in the sheets, a shitty little coffee machine in the corner and the faint scent of mildew lingering through the motel room while she’s deep in thought. 

To cap things off, Mitchell finally delivers her nomadic anthem “Refuge of the Roads.” The song opens with humble, cool-toned guitar strums as she begins to reflect on her time spent wandering. She describes herself as “Westbound and rolling taking refuge in the roads,” leaving the listener with an image of what it might be like to take off and search for fulfillment in endless stretches of pavement. Mitchell offers no absolute resolution to her travels, because just like the white lines on the freeway, her search for contentment never seems to end.

Photo by Norman Seeff.