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JOANNA "JOYCE" NEWSOM


Posted by Hartley On Feb 26, 2010

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I TOTES think my girlfriend looks like this.

Few words strike fear in the heart of the poor Bank Robber like "Double Album." You can imagine our collective enthusiasm when we all heard that Joanna Newsom's new record, Have One On Me (Drag City), would be a triple album!?!?!?!? Not only that, but three whole CD's worth of songs whose median lengths exceeded the 6 minute mark all lead us to believe that this record would be as licensable as a new John Cage piece. Well guess what? Surprise, IT IS COMPLETELY UNWORKABLE. Chorus' are few. Are there even chorus'? Verses sound like bridges. No parts are repeated twice or maybe they are repeated but they are repeated like five songs later or what feels like five songs later. I put Have One On Me on and ordered dinner, had dinner delivered, ate said dinner, digested, and then worked up an appetite again, and Miss J was still humming off in the distance about broken hearts and using words that only I know the meaning of...like "Shunt" (it means "a tiny passageway"). Sad that I know this. In truth, Newsom has made a record that perhaps makes sense only to herself, most hipsters living in the greater Brooklyn area who are pretending to understand it, the ghost of James Joyce, and freaks like me and my highschool girlfriend who managed to read the entire Canterbury Tales in two nights. Other than those folks, this album makes about as much sense as the fine print of a warranty policy at Best Buy. I am sure any minute Harvard will have a course dedicated to it.

All hope may be not lost though. The mighty braintrust at my old stomping grounds Pitchfokmedia recently lavished Have one.. with a 9.2 and their "Best New Music" tag. So now everyone will have to like it/pretend to like it. Furthermore, there are some really beautiful moments if you can put in the time hacking your way through the weeds. "Good Intentions Pavement Company" may be a trillion minutes long, but it's still the best Laura Nyro-influenced jam I've heard...well...ever. And it features a beautiful metaphor about love and opening a honey jar which has been quoted in about a thousand other reviews so I will spare you reading it again here. It's also important to note that "Good Intentions Pavement Company" takes it's idiosyncratic title from a reference to the Jewish modernist author Saul Bellow. Joanna has made a literary record, a record about words for those who love language and books and stuff. I dig it and will put in the time. "In California" is a gorgeous enough love song to keep me interested. I can't help wishing, though, that after making two back to back albums of long-ass cryptic overly-literate brainy elfin folk music, Joanna will let her hair down the next time around. Don't be scared of the Modern Age Jo Jo. Synthesizers sound good. A nice chorus too.

Joanna Newsom's Have One On Me is out now on Drag City.

 

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