Have One On Me
Joanna Newsom
Score:96
Reviewer: Steve Scully
Label: Drag City (USA & UK), Spunk (Australia)
Reviewed: Feb 24th '10, Released:2010
Have One on Me has all the tropes, all the quintessential Joanna Newsom qualities: the voice, the harp, the loopy balladeer musings. What makes the album something else altogether though is its near perfect execution. This makes Have One on Me Newsom’s finest album to date.
Have One on Me hooks you, and releases you. The songs that make up this complex opus manage to convey every emotional swing in its two hour running time. From the beautifully drawn ‘Easy’, to the light and uplifting ‘Good Intentions Paving Co.’ and the raw baggage behind ‘In California’ and its sister track ‘Does Not Suffice.’ The slight crack in her pristine voice as Newsom sings “Sometimes I am so in love with you” in ‘In California’, sits comfortably next to the sweeping 11-minute ‘Have One On Me’, the mono-melodic flow of ‘Esme’ and the uncharacteristic, yet sublime rhythmic interruptions (drummer Neal Morgan’s work is brialliant) of opener ‘Easy’.
The sheer length and scope of Have One On Me is the first and most obvious hurdle that Newsom has overcome. A three-disc set consisting of 18 songs makes the positively epic Ys look like an EP (as on first impressions, its 5-song tracklist suggests). Nonetheless, a call for more stringent editing of Newsom’s newest is gravely wrong. She is an auteur, an artist who is working in line with one vision. While some musicians take progression to mean experimentation with other musical genres, Newsom’s vision is of stretching her own language to its full extent. Like an author writing within the confines of the English language, her pieces – like Joyce, Bolano or Rushdie in the literary world – represent the language of folk music reaching its summit.
With every new album released by an artist as their career moves forward, the word ‘progress’ is ever present. Was this a logical progression? Have they gone out on a limb? Have they stagnated? These are questions often asked, and answered, by reviewers. Have One on Me defies any idea that an artist must progress to stay alive: artists can consolidate their positions and create something superb in the process. Within her acoustic confines, barely reaching beyond the sonic elements we’ve seen on Milk Eyed Mender or Ys, Newsom is far more progressive than any ‘prog-rock’ band or – dare I say it – even the likes of Animal Collective could ever be. Newsom’s is a merger of intelligence and musicality. A marriage of the head and the heart. Progressive music, too often overly-cerebral, is given soul and a touch of melodrama by Ms Newsom in her love songs on Have One on Me.
