Among trivia-crazed music fans, there are few arguments more predictable or exhausting than the revisionist claim that a band’s double album would have been better as a single. I won’t argue the merits of double albums in general here, but I will submit Joni Mitchell’s Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter as one of the great ones, because it does what double albums are supposed to do: it overwhelms. The album was not well received; in fact, record store lore has it that Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter is the most “returned” LP of all time. The album’s gatefold cover features a photomontage of Mitchell in various disguises, including a character she calls Art Nouveau, portrayed in blackface. There is one song that lasts an entire side, and another that features only indigenous-sounding percussion and vocals. Am I selling you on this yet? Stick it out and Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter’s lofty ambitions bear fruit: the songs that initially sound the most abstruse and difficult are the ones that will eventually win you over. By now, Mitchell’s previous dalliances with jazz have bloomed into full-blown romance, and the result is, like Hejira before it, a kind of aggregated post-jazz, abetted by such heavy talents as Wayne Shorter and Larry Carlton. From the luminous and dizzying “Cotton Avenue” to the loose and breezy “Jericho” and the growling and grumbling “Off Night Backstreet,” each piece is filigreed with a subtlety and nuance rarely found in rock music. “Paprika Plains” uses the entirety of side two to relay a story that may or may not have to do with nuclear war, alcoholism, or the plight of Native Americans. As it unfurls, we are sent spinning, as if on a theme park ride, through multiple sections encompassing jazz fusion, orchestral bombast, and freeform piano ruminations. Like many sprawling double albums, Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter revels in its untidiness. It’s the sound of Mitchell expressing herself with verve, poise, and, above all, joy. In the past, Mitchell’s grandiloquence has always suggested a poverty-stricken sense of humor, but here, she’s uproarious: “I didn’t know I drank such a lot/ Till I pissed a tequila-anaconda.” Only a killjoy would deny her such excesses.