themilkfactory » Joanna Newsom

Joanna Newsom/Roy Harper, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London, 12/052010

themilkman — Thu, 13 May 2010 23:42:07 +0000

It was a Royal Festival Hall packed to the rafters that welcomed Joanna Newsom on the second of her two London dates this Wednesday evening. She had managed to convince her musical hero, Roy Harper, to open for her for these two shows, as she had a few years ago at the Royal Albert Hall. Harper, who was performing live for only the second time following a three year break, played a selection of songs, most of them dating back to the late sixties and early seventies (The Green Man, Another Day or Me And My Woman to name but a few), his voice, strong, with rich overtones and deep reaches, effortlessly filling the RFH, while he alternated between two electro-acoustic guitars, at times so utterly fragile and ephemeral, at other incredibly gritty and violent. Despite the man qualifying his performance of ‘less than brilliant’, at times warning ‘watch the rust fall off’ in reference to his confessed lack of practice, Harper totally captured the attention of his audience and gathered warm and rightly deserved applause at the end of his set. Before leaving the stage, he gave Joanna Newsom heartfelt thanks for inviting him to open for her, a thank you that was to be returned on more than one occasion during Newsom’s set.

Walking on stage alone, Newsom, wearing a flowing summer dress, took her place at the harp and, after spending a little time settling down, during which an unplanned encounter with a faulty microphone nearly deafened the congregation, she opened with Jackrabbits, seeming particularly fragile as harp and voice resonated through the auditorium, before her musicians, led by multi-instrumentist Ryan Francesconi, the man responsible for the arrangements on Newsom’s recent album, took their place around her and, for the next hour and a half, punctuated Newsom’s performance with delicate touches. Francesconi, playing anything from guitar and Bulgarian tambura to kaval, a flute-like instrument, and drummer Neil Morgan, each occupying one end of the stage, were the most prominent contributors to the evening, even taking it in turn to address the audience during an odd joke exchange between the audience and the stage whilst Newsom retuned her harp later in the show. Songs from the new album made up most of the set, with Have One On Me, Easy or In California taking proud place in the performance, whilst old classics The Book Of Right-On, Inflammatory Writ and Peach Plum Pear also made an appearance. While Newsom’s voice has greatly matured since The Milk-Eyed Mender was recorded, partly due to a series of vocal cord nodes which she had removed last year, there were on these songs hints of the harsher tones that characterized her early recordings. The subject of a series of performances with orchestras around the world three years ago, Ys was largely overlooked tonight, with only Emily making the set list, but despite the restricted formation, it still managed to convey the same raw emotions than the much more orchestrated version she played with the LSO in 2007

All throughout the evening, Newsom regularly swapped the harp for the piano. She is not, it has to be said, the greatest of pianists, her style often feeling heavy and clunky, and lacking the fluidity of her harp playing. This is perhaps even more obvious live, yet, this said, she makes up in disarming honesty what she lacks in technique. The playful interplay she and Morgan entered into on Soft As Chalk was quite a delight to watch, and there were visible signs of enjoyment on her face as she performed Good Intentions Paving Company. The ensemble left the stage under thunderous applause following a rendition of Peach Plum Pear, but quickly returned. Joanna Newsom, once again at the harp, roses, thrown by members of the audience, scattered at her feet, led her ensemble into the superb Baby Birch to bring the show to a close.

While her band provided invaluable support throughout the set, it was very much Joanna who was carrying the show on her shoulders. She is, underneath her delicate figure, a tremendously fearless performer, and she proved it again with a faultless concert tonight.

Joanna Newsom on Drag City | South Bank Centre

JOANNA NEWSOM: Have One On Me (Drag City)

themilkman — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 00:57:33 +0000

JOANNA NEWSOM
Have One On Me
DC390
Drag City 2010
18 Tracks. 124mins01secs

Joanna Newsom could only follow the sheer brilliance of the majestic Ys, released three and a half ago already, by rising up to a challenge of a different kind. Have One On Me is a daunting affair by any standards. Eighteen songs spread over three discs and two hours, this is epic in every possible way, but there is here very little left of the expensive orchestrations devised by Van Dyke Parks. Instead, Ys Street Band leader Ryan Francesconi brings Newsom’s songs to life in much more subtle ways, drafting in banjos, acoustic and electric guitars, Bulgarian tambura, kaval, mandolin, Hammond organ, strings, brass and woodwinds, while Newsom alternates between the harp and the piano, her style as assertive with the latter as it is light and sharp with the former.

The songs, while still often developing over several minutes, are in general more contained, but there is no such a thing as traditional song forms in Miss Newsom’s work. Verses, bridges and choruses are, for the most part, irrelevant. Instead, each song goes through multiple variations and changes in pace, tone or style, the melody never entirely set in stone, responding rather to the variations in Newsom’s intricate lyrics. And lyrics are, even more so than with Ys, really the key to these songs and to Newsom’s work. She has lost none of the imaginative and fertile story-telling forms that gave Ys an identity all of its own. In fact, the scope appears ever broader, more ambitious here. There are, scattered over the whole records, stories of lost love, love found, acclaimed dancers, the melancholy of autumn… told in ways so refined and poetic that it is easy to get lost in the meanders of phrases and meanings. This is, it seems, part of the game, as if Newsom was weaving seemingly random threads into tightly knit webs around her listener. This works particularly well on the title track, which snakes its way through wonderfully delicate harp arpeggios and orchestral ebbs and flows to. The song tells of Irish-born dancer Lola Montez, who became mistress of King Ludwig I of Bavaria in the seventeenth century, and who is said to be at the origin of the phrase ‘whatever Lola wants, Lola gets’. On Good Intentions Paving Company, Baby Birch, California or Go Long, Newsom transforms the mundane into epic tales. Elsewhere, she draws exquisite poetic motifs, on the superb ’81, On A Good Day or Autumn, all either performed on her own or with a particularly discreet backdrop, while on No Provenance, her vocals are beautifully underlined by the light arabesques of a woodwind quartet.

The shrieking voice of The Milk-Eyed Mender had soften greatly by the time Joanna Newsom came to record Ys, and is softer, more controlled and nuanced here still, yet it has retained much of its natural naivety and charm, allowing her to play on a much broader palette. Now sounding more demure and feminine, she remains a fearless and supremely confident vocalist, who can switch from sweet to sour in an instant. Nowadays though, she does so with much more maturity and discipline, and while some may regret the untrained freedom of her early works, this restraint serves these songs admirably.

Have One On Me is at odds with the modern world, where information has to be accessible in a flash and albums have become an obsolete concept. Here, Newsom celebrates the gentle passing of time and gives plenty to think over. Its sheer size makes this album a difficult pill to absorb and process all at once. For all its intricacies and lushness, Ys had a level of immediacy which is partly absent here. The songs of Have One On Me require sustained attention and active listening to unlock and appreciate their inner beauty, and it may be that it is an album best experienced in small chunks, at least at first, but the reward at the end of it is more than worth the effort.

4.8/5

10 YEARS IN 20 RECORDS

themilkman — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 00:17:18 +0000

The noughties have seen probably the most radical changes in the music industries since the advent of the record. Consumption habits have dramatically moved from traditional to digital formats, music has been increasingly seen as something to steal rather than to buy, and listening habits means that nowadays, the album is becoming increasingly redundant. Or is it? Whereas it had, at least in some circles, become totally acceptable to fill records with substandard music, it is now essential for artists to create consistent pieces of work if they want to retain the attention of their audience. The last ten years have delivered their fair share of hits and misses, and this list doesn’t pretend to be in any way shape or form exhaustive. This is just, in no particular order, the definitive list of the 20 albums that have defined the noughties at themilkfactory.

JOANNA NEWSOM
Ys
DC303CD
Drag City 2006
05 Tracks. 55mins41secs
.

An album like no other, by an artist like no other. Containing just five songs, some developed over fifteen minutes, Ys, named after a small mythical city on the coast of Brittany, France, is the second album by American folk singer and harp player Joanna Newsom. Van Dyke Parks wraps lush orchestrations around Joanna Newsom’s weird and wonderful tales to give her poetic lyrics additional relief and accentuate the emotional nature of her compositions.

themilkfactory » Joanna Newsom

Joanna Newsom/Roy Harper, Royal Festival Hall, South Bank Centre, London, 12/052010

JOANNA NEWSOM: Have One On Me (Drag City)

10 YEARS IN 20 RECORDS

Joanna Newsom, Somerset House, London, 20/07/2008

JOANNA NEWSOM: Ys (Drag City)