Plumbiferous Media

After three critically-acclaimed albums (and two early self-released LPs), Joanna New­som released her newest album, Have One on Me on the 23rd. Have One on Me com­bines the best parts of Newsom’s ear­lier albums with some new cre­ative and musi­cal twists. It’s at the same time Newsom’s longest album and her best album over­all - she’s taken her immense cre­ativ­ity and applied it to a huge num­ber of con­cepts to cre­ate just over two hours of immensely inter­est­ing music. As such, Have One on Me is noth­ing short of excellent.

Have One on Me makes good use of the famil­iar sound of Newsom’s harp, whether com­bined with a vari­ety of instru­men­tals for the rich sound found on “Have One on Me” or left alone with Newsom’s voice for the sparser (and yet incred­i­bly reward­ing) sound New­som has proven her­self to be so good at cre­at­ing. The sweep­ing, rhyth­mic sound which this pro­vides to the album cre­ates a sort of seren­ity which con­trasts beau­ti­fully with Newsom’s occa­sion­ally sur­pris­ing vocal twists and turns. With Have One on Me’s eigh­teen tracks, New­som uses a wide vari­ety of instru­men­tal approaches to cre­ate songs that are rec­og­niz­ably hers, with­out ever slip­ping into rep­e­ti­tion or bor­ing the listener.

There are dis­tinc­tive vocal­ists - and then there’s Joanna New­som, whose unique vocal style is often the main focus of any exam­i­na­tion of her music. Newsom’s style is del­i­cate with a care­fully con­sid­ered com­plex­ity, inno­cent with­out seem­ing child­ish, and always just strange enough to intrigue a listener’s ear with­out slip­ping into abstrac­tion. Along with her vocal style, New­som uses a sin­gu­lar pat­tern of inflec­tion which makes every word quirk­ily melodic - it’s jar­ring when it needs to be, but for the most part it allows Newsom’s music to flow at the pace she chooses, how­ever nor­mal or strange that may be.

New­som is most fond of telling sto­ries filled with some­times odd but always bril­liantly clear imagery, and she’s done just that on Have One on Me. Pic­tures like “a brace of jackrab­bits / With their necks all broke” con­trast sharply with the “par­a­lyzed daisy” of “Easy,” but New­som uses both to paint the fan­tas­tic pic­tures that stream through Have One on Me. There are occa­sional ref­er­ences to real­ity (often his­tory) in Newsom’s story, most notably “Have One on Me” itself, which quite col­or­fully tells the story of Lola Mon­tez, Count­ess of Lands­feld. As such, though Have One on Me is cer­tainly inter­est­ing sim­ply through its musi­cal ele­ments, with the addi­tion of Newsom’s cre­ative way of sto­ry­telling, it becomes truly compelling.

Have One on Me is two hours long and spans three LPs. By all rights, this should be too long, and for just about any other musi­cian, it would be. But for Joanna New­som, who’s just at home with the eleven-minute “Have One on Me” as she is with the sub-two minute “On a Good Day” and who made her last album, Ys, a mas­ter­piece with a total of five tracks, it’s not. Instead, Have One on Me is an expe­ri­ence - two hours of Newsom’s cre­ativ­ity, lov­ingly poured into eigh­teen var­ied tracks. It’s just as impres­sive taken in small parts as in its two-hour entirety, and as a whole it’s an excel­lent step for­ward. At this point, an excel­lent album from Joanna New­som isn’t a sur­prise - but it’s cer­tainly a pleasure

This post is tagged 90-100, Joanna Newsom