5/5
Have One on Me
When Joanna Newsom first appeared with The Milk Eyed Mender in 2004 she was easy to dismiss: an elfin little folkie with a wittering voice and – of all things – a goddamned harp. However, her follow-up – 2006’s epic Ys, which managed to be almost an hour long despite containing five songs – topped many best-of-the-year lists and sold remarkably well for a deeply unfashionable, technically proficient piece of folk-prog, with a cover painting depicting its creator as a medieval duchess.
So now we have a triple album – a TRIPLE ALBUM, people! – with 18 songs over two hours. It’s a lot to digest, not least because Newsom’s songs demand serious attention, but the 11-minute title track acts as a neat distillation of Newsom’s development. The first movement has her cooing gently over cascading harppegios as per her debut, but it then abruptly changes gear into the stabbing pizzicato of her Ys-era work, while strings, mandolin, brass and percussion build and ebb behind her like stormclouds, until the song is almost overwhelming by zig-zagging melody lines from a dozen different instruments. And, then, at the eight-and-a-half minute mark, she freakin’ breaks it down – and just as you’re ready to sing along with the massed vocals, the Newsom of the introduction returns. Genius.
The rest of the album is equally playful. The upbeat ‘Good Intentions Paving Company’ sounds like it’s set to turn into a boogie, while ‘81’ (the year before Newsom was born, incidentally) is a stately, unadorned waltz and the middle of ‘Baby Birch’ leaves the singalong freak-folk of Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeroes in the dust. On a purely technical level the singing is magnificent: until now her voice has sounded better live than on record, but here she reins in the wavering vibrato most of the time, only to unleash it in full effect when required. She swaps harp for piano on several occasions on the third disc (‘Occident’, ‘Soft As Chalk’ and the closing ‘Does Not Suffice’, which seems built to be a future country/blues standard-in-waiting) but most of the time the predominantly acoustic instrumentation is what you’d expect. It’s also beautifully arranged, courtesy of her musical director Ryan Francesconi.
As an artistic achievement, Have One on Me is amazing – but more remarkably, it’s possibly the only triple album ever released that doesn’t outstay its welcome. If you’ve resisted her peculiar charms until now, this is the time to succumb. Andrew P Street.
Have One on Me is in stores now
