Whatever your personal opinion of Joanna Newsom, or her music, I'd imagine it would be hard for anyone to doubt her ambition. And whether you're taken in by her brand of fey, winsome folk depends entirely on your ability to allow music to engulf you, to hear past the effusive reviews of magazines or online sites, and to be taken in by the gorgeous and panoramic vistas that Newsom paints with these instruments, in particular across the three discs that comprise her newest album, Have One On Me. With songs basically built around her harp and expressive voice, and simple, though powerful, accompanying arrangements for strings, horns, and other orchestral instruments, Newsom is able to convey emotional intensity on a primal level. These are songs that whirl around in your subconscious, the sometime archaic lyrical content vying for space in your head. Her tales of love, loss, and plaintive reconciliation echo through the long winding corridors that connect these three discs thematically. Have One On Me, though at first seeming to overwhelm the listener, is sequenced across these discs are perfectly as any album I've heard. And the specific songs which Newsom uses to close and open each section provide the needed resonance within their respective slots to maintain the cohesion of an album that in any other circumstance could have easily become a sprawling mess. Highlights are harder to come by on an album like this, not because there are no stand-out songs--there are--but rather, the album feels fuller and more complete when viewed as a whole. And on the surface this may seem like a terribly daunting task but as these songs begin to sink in and the arrangement of the songs coalesce in terms that the listener understands, Have One On Me takes on a whole other personality and stature, one that exists only for our benefit and for our need. Joanna Newsom is an artist with a singular gift; she creates these fantastical worlds within which her songs exist and though her use of exaggerated imagery and lyrical antiquities, she allows the listener, on a fundamental level, to view the world as she thinks we should, without the pain that we cause each other, and ourselves, and is not afraid to take our hand and guide us willingly through this world, attempting to shield us from the dark.
Tracklisting:
01. Easy
02. Have One on Me
03. ’81
04. Good Intentions Paving Company (listen to the mp3 below)
05. No Provenance
06. Baby Birch
07. On a Good Day
08. You and Me, Bess
09. In California
10. Jackrabbits
11. Go Long
12. Occident
13. Soft as Chalk
14. Esme
15. Autumn
16. Ribbon Bows
17. Kingfisher
18. Does Not Suffice
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