Joanna Newsom

Joanna Newsom
Milk - Eyed Mender
(2004)

Rating: 8.4

I've developed a bit of a thing for Joanna Newsom over the past month or so. I have never read an interview with her and until yesterday, had never seen her picture; but she keeps leaking into my head unexpectedly. It's like in Touching the Void, when Joe Simpson is trying to get his bearings but is constantly confused by the sound of Boney M's "Brown Girl in the Ring" blaring in his head.

It's Joanna Newsom's voice that does it. She sings like a little girl who's got her favourite flavour lolly pop wedged in her mouth. I can't say that I liked it when I first heard it (in fact my face probably screwed up in a "What the fuck is this shit?" expression), but like that Boney M song, it keeps assaulting me.

The songs themselves are predominantly played on the Celtic Harp and are steeped in the tradition of demented Appalachian folk. In fact, over the course of the album it becomes difficult to suppress the suspicion that Joanna Newsom is bat shit insane. But it's the quality of the storytelling that draws you in. The opening song, Bridges and Balloons, tells the story of a reckless adventure on a shambolic ship; with a chorus of parrots adding to the tension by quoting from an eighteenth century novel. In Inflammatory Writ, she attempts a seminal novel but ends up staring out window in the middle of the night:

"In spite of all the time that we spent on it:
one bedraggled ghost of a sonnet!
While outside, the wild boars root
without bending a bough underfoot-
O it breaks my heart; I don't know how they do't. "

But despite all the hilarity, nothing seems forced. The songs are quite intimate and even though there seems to be some confessional content, she never spreads herself thin. It's nothing like the brain freezingly horrible tweeness of someone like Damien Rice or Sir Glen Hansard for instance. The storys are great and the singing comes across as both childishly innocent and worldly. In fact it's quite difficult to reconcile the two. Overall it sounds as if Gary Coleman got his first career break in twenty years playing Annie on Broadway. Tomorrow! Tomorrow! And isn't she pretty as well?