Joanna Newsom, in case you are unaware, is a lovely young lass from California who has produced two absolutely wonderful and both incredibly individual albums. The first being 2004's The Milk Eyed Mender the other being 2006's Ys. I feel a little bit of background is needed here in regard to those two albums so you can see the evolution of Ms. Newsom. The Milk Eyed Mender was unique when it first came out due to Newsom's mix of gorgeous harp (yeah, full on harp like on the side of a pint o' Guinness), fanciful and meandering lyrics that had a heavy focus on nature and her unique voice. Her voice is something you're gonna either love or hate when it comes to The Milk Eyed Mender and Ys but as I'll explain later this album you might feel slightly different.
Ys was a huge step up for Newsom, she went from an album of 12 songs with an average length of 4 minutes to this, a 5-track album where the shortest song is 7 and a half minutes long (the longest is just shy of 17 minutes). Another reason it seemed such a step up was because it wasn't just her voice, her harp/piano and some backing instrumentation i.e. lap steel. Instead this was so impressive because she had full orchestral backing with some absolutely gorgeous compositions for strings throughout the album but all the while it maintained Newsom's sound. She still had the wonderful lyrics that have a big nature focus, she still had her wonderfully distinct voice (brought under control somewhat but still allowed to break free every now and again) and the harp still featured prominently. So what on earth could follow this up? This behemoth of an album which people kept comparing to Van Morrison's classic Astral Weeks.
Well the answer to that is, Have One On Me. Like its precursor it's an epic, this even more so. Three discs totaling at just over two hours of music and again with a similarity to its epic, its got a fuller instrumentation to it than The Milk Eyed Mender but there's not so much a sense of the grandiose orchestral nature, rather a more laid back calmed down approach is brought to it. This laid back and unobtrusive backing comes from Newsom's band leader, Ryan Francesconi, who with Newsom has come up with the perfect backing for her songs. The backing no longer is extravagant but is unobstrusive and flows with the song. It's also greatly varied from just simple fuzzy guitar on "Baby Birch" to a kora and harp jam on "Go Long" and not forgetting the great brass band work on "You, Me and Bess."
I feel I should point out that despite the length of the album as a whole, it's that bit more listenable than Ys for the very reason that the tracks are shorter. Instead of 20-minute epics this has little 10-minute songs for easier consumption and so you can afford a drop in concentration every once in a while. Ys was great and very rewarding for a dedicated listener but you had to concentrate on it to get the most out of it, with this album you don't require such intense listening focus. The songs are constructed so they can stand on their own, mesh together as a disc by disc entity and then as a full album based entity of the three discs. It's very well put together.
Have One On Me, lyrically is still as fantastic as Newsom has ever been with songs revolving around love, loss, nature, mysticism and fairies and there's still Newsom's distinct use of arcane language. Who here can tell me what she means when she sings "Her faultlessly etiolated fishbelly-face" or perhaps you know what she means by, "on a palanquin made from the many bodies of beautiful women." Remember, no googling allowed.
Vocally, Newsom is somewhat different as to how she was before, she's lost a certain intensity from her voice that came from a slight shrillness. Now I may be among the minority who'll actually miss that factor but I should warn those who despise her voice that it's not an entirely different entity. It's still very Joanna Newsom but it's that bit more controlled and has a slightly soulful tint so there may be parallels drawn to Leslie Feist or Cat Power especially on the likes of "Does Not Suffice." Newsom's detractors still won't like it, they'll call it pretentious and they'll still hate her voice and harp playing but those who have listened to her before and have enjoyed her music before will be left very pleased with this outing.
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