I once heard Douglas Jenkins (of the Portland Cello Project) liken seeing Joanna Newsom in concert to watching a fairy pirate with a harp, and I've yet to hear a more apt comparison. Of course, I would add to his description "captivating" and "talented" and a string of other complimentary adjectives.
Besides the harp, Newsom's sometimes dulcet and old-world, sometimes vibrant and childlike, voice, combined with lyrics about tarantulas and inflammatory writs and cockleshells, lends credibility to the comparisons to pixies and other mystical beings. In a world where the number of new bands to listen to each day can grow wearying, and where every band is compared to some other band, Newsom has created a sound that is truly unique and incomparable.
Have One On Me picks up where her previous albums left off, not doing something terribly different that what she did on Ys or The Milk-Eyed Mender, but doing it better, with greater depth and maturity. The album is long—18 tracks in all, with the majority of them longer than six minutes—and filled with epic tales and rich arrangements of harp, piano, percussion, banjo, jaw harp, recorder, trombone, guitar, violin, and more.
And, even with 18 tracks, it is an album on which it is very difficult to pick favorites. Have One is an album that stops you in your tracks—entangling you in the subtle opening strings of the romantic "Easy" and taking you on a two-hour journey through another world—and once you reach the sad, sweet farewell of "Does Not Suffice," you'll want to take the journey over again.
While picking favorites is difficult, "'81" is a definite stand-out, and once you watch Newsom perform it live, you'll have no trouble understanding how the songstress sold out two back-to-back shows when she visited Portland this fall:
No comments:
Post a Comment