Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Joanna Newsom in Artrocker
Joanna Newsom with the London Symphony Orchestra at the Barbican
19 January 2007
There are things music does, describes, invokes, that words cannot get close to, we all know that. That clumsy crappy simile that writing about music is like dancing about architecture demonstrates this better than it explains it. But Joanna Newsom is the first artist to make me really this; you can mention influences or other singers and musicians who sound a bit like her, or talk about the set list and her fellow musicians (and I will) but Joanna Newsom really just shows us why music is wonderful and the world is good. It is soul balm and brain joy and heart food; it tickles and strokes your imagination.
And when did I ever think about how important looking is, in music? (Apart from staring at Jack White’s cock-shadow during a Brixton gig a couple of years ago, where I actually got quite breathless.) Watching Newsom’s hands – the steady left and the fleeting, plinking right – as you hear the harp sounds. And seeing the violinists lift their bows, wait, play… And the orchestra’s turning of the pages, all together; and the conductor swinging his hips a little as well as his arms. Seeing Newsom’s wingmen – Neil Morgan on a big drum and Ryan Francesconi on banjo – with eyes fixed on her, waiting for their time. And watching Bill Callahan, Newsom’s boyfriend and the man who is Smog, wait nervously behind a mic to one side for more than ten minutes, his legs getting wider and wider apart and hands deeper in his pockets like a little kid, until it’s his moment to add those beautiful bassy vocals to Joanna’s firm, strange angelly sound in Only Skin. (That’s the bit also where I really started crying.)
Newsom plays the whole of the new album, Ys, in one genius go, with the London Symphony Orchestra. (The album is partly orchestrated by Van Dyke Parks, who worked with Brian Wilson on Smile, and there is a Beach Boys lushness to the music.) She comes on to already rapturous applause, sits down and positions her harp. Then silence, and she takes a swig from a bottle of water. I’ve never witnessed so many people so quiet and still watching someone take a drink. And then whack, straight into Emily, the song about Joanna’s sister, and father, and love for her family and how they can teach you and show you other ways to see the universe (literally: “The meteorite is a source of the light, and the meteor's just what we see, and the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee,” Newsom explains. Emily is an astrophysicist…).
After Ys, live, there is no need for a second half, but oh it is good to have it. Newsom plays without the orchestra, some older songs (Sadie, Book of Right On, Clam Cockle Cowrie), a Scottish folk song (Ca’ the Yowes), and a new song which is a dirty, pelvis-tingling folk-country number, and nothing like anything on Ys. There is more chat, too, now that there’s no string section to get fidgety while she talks: a dedication to the tour manager (“a king among men”) and a girl whose seventh birthday it was (“she gave me a pillow,” Newsom explains, simply.) And then the show is over and Newsom pretty much skips off the stage, bouncing along on her standing ovation. This woman is a miracle.
19 January 2007
There are things music does, describes, invokes, that words cannot get close to, we all know that. That clumsy crappy simile that writing about music is like dancing about architecture demonstrates this better than it explains it. But Joanna Newsom is the first artist to make me really
And when did I ever think about how important looking is, in music? (Apart from staring at Jack White’s cock-shadow during a Brixton gig a couple of years ago, where I actually got quite breathless.) Watching Newsom’s hands – the steady left and the fleeting, plinking right – as you hear the harp sounds. And seeing the violinists lift their bows, wait, play… And the orchestra’s turning of the pages, all together; and the conductor swinging his hips a little as well as his arms. Seeing Newsom’s wingmen – Neil Morgan on a big drum and Ryan Francesconi on banjo – with eyes fixed on her, waiting for their time. And watching Bill Callahan, Newsom’s boyfriend and the man who is Smog, wait nervously behind a mic to one side for more than ten minutes, his legs getting wider and wider apart and hands deeper in his pockets like a little kid, until it’s his moment to add those beautiful bassy vocals to Joanna’s firm, strange angelly sound in Only Skin. (That’s the bit also where I really started crying.)
Newsom plays the whole of the new album, Ys, in one genius go, with the London Symphony Orchestra. (The album is partly orchestrated by Van Dyke Parks, who worked with Brian Wilson on Smile, and there is a Beach Boys lushness to the music.) She comes on to already rapturous applause, sits down and positions her harp. Then silence, and she takes a swig from a bottle of water. I’ve never witnessed so many people so quiet and still watching someone take a drink. And then whack, straight into Emily, the song about Joanna’s sister, and father, and love for her family and how they can teach you and show you other ways to see the universe (literally: “The meteorite is a source of the light, and the meteor's just what we see, and the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee,” Newsom explains. Emily is an astrophysicist…).
After Ys, live, there is no need for a second half, but oh it is good to have it. Newsom plays without the orchestra, some older songs (Sadie, Book of Right On, Clam Cockle Cowrie), a Scottish folk song (Ca’ the Yowes), and a new song which is a dirty, pelvis-tingling folk-country number, and nothing like anything on Ys. There is more chat, too, now that there’s no string section to get fidgety while she talks: a dedication to the tour manager (“a king among men”) and a girl whose seventh birthday it was (“she gave me a pillow,” Newsom explains, simply.) And then the show is over and Newsom pretty much skips off the stage, bouncing along on her standing ovation. This woman is a miracle.
