Greg Wood: The Joanna Newsom experience
I am surprised that Joanna Newsom came to Knoxville.
I’ve been obsessed with her music for well over a year now and was shocked when I picked up the paper and saw that she would be playing at Blue Cats. Shocked for two reasons: one, why would she come to a small city like Knoxville? And two, because quiet, beautiful harp music is not something that Blue Cats tends to offer most.
Regardless, I wasn’t going to miss it for the world, and it turned out to be even better than I could’ve even imagined.
Joanna Newsom is known for playing intricate harp parts and singing in a high-pitched, pixie-like voice over them. Her songs don’t usually follow a verse-chorus or verse-chorus-bridge progression. Some songs off of her first full-length album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, have one or two lines or “riffs” (if you will) that serve as the “chorus” that are repeated at seemingly random intervals throughout a five-minute piece. It’s something that takes getting used to, but eventually these small portions of the song make the piece worth listening to in its entirety.
Recently, she released a new album, entitled Ys (pronounced “ees,” apparently), which is drastically different from Milk-Eyed Mender. Her voice is more powerful—she can belt harder than before and she can cause higher-pitched squeaks. She has backup instruments, which sound like a full orchestra on the studio recording (but are far from it during live performances). The songs are longer (the shortest being around 7 minutes, and the longest being 16) and there are only five tracks on the album. Maybe Joanna has been listening to a lot of Pink Floyd recently, as the layout of this album resembles golden-era Pink Floyd.
The Floyd-influence theory is mostly a joke, but after seeing her live, it doesn’t seem a joke at all.
After a third song (an “old Scottish tune”) a full band consisting of five people came out on stage and went to their instruments which were placed in a circle around Joanna. She told the crowd “now we’re going to play the new album.” Somehow, I really didn’t think she meant they were going to play the entire thing.
I was wrong. It took me through the first song and part of the second to realize that they were going to play the new album in its entirety, from start to finish, a la Pink Floyd.
I’ve always felt that albums should be a cohesive unit and shouldn’t just be a collection of songs. I’ve only seen one band ever play an album in its entirety (Primus playing Sailing the Seas of Cheese) but it’s something more bands should do, and I couldn’t have been happier that Joanna chose to.
Joanna was backed by a guitar, a banjo, a glockenspiel, a drum set (consisting of only a bass drum and two ride symbols), and an accordion. Other instruments, such as a musical saw and some instrument that I didn’t even recognize (which seemed to be like a lower-pitched mandolin) occasionally came into the mix as well.
Joanna led us through the new album for about the next hour. The album feels like a musical or opera. There isn’t much obvious rock influence on it. Instead, it feels incredibly theatrical, with descript stories (such as the track “Monkey and Bear”) laced throughout. It seems even more scattered, with more musical changes per song than Milk-Eyed Mender. It’s hard to call it catchy with so many changes. Instead, it’s like a collage of a bunch of little catchy riffs or themes, like fragments of old classical pieces sewn together.
The band let Joanna lead them and the crowd through a one-hour experience. They had their sheet music laid-out in front of them, chiming in on backup vocals at times. The entire performance was mesmerizing. I hardly turned away from the stage, fixated on Joanna’s intense plucking and powerful singing. Nothing really went through my head the entire time—I just stared and took the whole performance in.
Afterward, it seemed like the show had lasted only 10 minutes, but she had played for at least an hour and a half.
I’ve never paid attention for an hour and a half straight on anything in my life. I can barely make it through movies. At concerts I usually leave my spot to go get a beer or two. At Joanna’s show, beer seemed completely unnecessary and I felt far more comfortable standing and watching.
She’s still in the southeast for the next few days, so make the road trip and see her. You may never get a chance to see Ys performed in its entirety again.