Joanna Newsom – Have One On Me (Drag City)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should declare an interest. Since Ys was released I have inhabited the music of Joanna Newsom in the same way a fish inhabits water. A big, strong, noble salmon, probably. Could also be a goldfish too though, given my regulation 21st Century attention span. Actually I liked the salmon better. Not a day has gone by when I haven’t at least considered giving in and sinking into the depths of Newsom’s unique harp-batshit-and-host-of-amazing-friends ocean.

So why after four years of no new material am I still so hooked? Well, a fish probably doesn’t notice the water until it eddies and beats against his muscular, silver sides (I’m really getting into character here). Swimming upriver against the current he feels more alive than ever. No mill ponds for him, no stately canals. Just as the white at the surface shows furious motion, beneath the spume he feels, not sees the power of the moving water.

Joanna Newsom in her pomp blows you away by switching tack mid-stream in ways that continue to shock and awe even with repeated listening. The water never becomes a medium, always a challenge, a battle and a triumph. [Fish metaphors will now cease until a final, rather disappointing return in the last sentence.]

This third album proper splits the difference between the tiny, polished gems of The Milk-Eyed Mender and the rambling multi-chaptered epics on Ys.

Have One On Me sprawls across 3 CDs. The cover shows Newsom lounged amongst a sumptuous junk-shop of nick-knacks and taxidermy. And that just about sums the whole project up. There’s treasure here, but it’s more conventional than we’ve become used to, and it’s more of a job to pick the jewels from the paste.

The first five tracks are the album that should have been. Might be my attention span kicking in, but beyond that five I find myself drifting in and out.

Easy is a tingly-sweet ballad sung while furniture is being thrown around the room. The switch-back changes in pace and tone and instrumentation are everything that Newsom does better than everyone else on the planet. Strings and brass are wielded with a nonchalant violence. The title number is an 11 minute track (I LOVE an 11 minute track) that starts as if butter wouldn’t melt in its mouth then kicks in like a mad swan in a cake shop. The words ‘Here’s Lola (Ta Da!) to do her famous spider dance for you’ make me happier than anything ever has or ever possibly could again.

81 is a short and pretty return to the bijou Milk-Eyed Mender style. An experiment with singing mostly out of her nostrils on parts of the track is definitely interesting. Good Intentions Paving Company, apart from being the best joke I’ve heard in ages has a bluesy piano roll and is the strongest track lyrically.

The remaining thousands of tracks are cut from the same piece of cloth, which admittedly compared to other cloths is the Bayeux Frigging Tapestry, but it’s still an anticlimax. Kingfisher swells suitably syphillitically, You And Me, Bess has brass you could hug. Autumn is undeniably, intricately perfect, but sleepy.

When I played this to unsuspecting people I was asked whether the same song had been playing for 25 minutes. The album had actually been on for an hour and a half, which supported my theory that this is good stuff, but just too long.

Fortunately there’s an unparalleled hour of listening amongst the white elephants and rejigging the playlist until I find the perfect order is my sacrilegious grail quest for the time being. That and resisting the strong urge to return to the place of my birth and spawn. Glub.

Stephen Taylor