Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (RIP blogs)

this year of being 27/28 has been the first time in my life that Divers has resonated with me because its three main themes -- love, time, and mortality -- have all escaped me virtually my entire life until this year

and with that, I'm really looking forward to growing with it!

i would say divers is the best album of the 2010s

(did the lol unicorns crew shitting up the first attempts to discuss this ever bother to hear to it because the zings are particularly misplaced for this album)

This thread is in my POX of ilx threads.

It's the record I'd play someone before I killed them, definitely.

― Fig On A Plate Cart (Alex in SF), Tuesday, January 26, 2010 3:52 PM (ten years ago) bookmarkflaglink

I've typed this before but if you have Newsom on vinyl it's fun to run them at 45 rpm

Pulled this out again last night and made it through about 3/4s of it before I crashed out (started with disc 2 tho). Made for a lovely listen with the first snow of the season sticking to the ground. "Does Not Suffice" is such a terrific closer.

9 years ago there was a moment when I shared Go Long with a young woman and it expressed perfect romantic tension.
Have One on Me was incredible from day one when the game was to agree on what was the best CD (still 2).
I haven't returned much to Newsom since Divers, after slightly over-obsessing with her (since Ys) but I can always return to her. Divers took a bit of time due to the crackling pastoral folksy village atmosphere and high-pitched register, but the compositions and highs are there: Sapokanikan and the slower more solemn songs: A Pin-Light Bent, the title song, the closer. It's interesting that she hasn't recorded a new album since then... I wonder what she thinks of it, if she feels like she has exhausted her style.
A lot of memories from travelling to London alone to see her (as a young man), then in Zurich through three hours of rain and traffic a Friday night and we got there late, and finally to make it up in a concert place in Luzern that is used for opera and shaped like a boat for perfect acoustics.

On a Good Day - the opening track of disc 2 - I think it is one of her most concise and beautiful songs

Horrible 70's album titles like I've Got My Own Album to Do

whatever

she's made four albums in a row that are almost perfect, can't think of many other artists today that applies to

I will always love Joanna Newsom for having the Moore Brothers sing on this album — worth checking out: https://themoorebros.com/

Deflatormouse actually makes a good point - there is a tension between the highly colloquial sense of the title, and the actual resonance of it after you take in the title track.

It's also easy to imagine it as the title of, say, a Tanya Tucker album from 1978 with her dressed as a diner waitress on the cover.

Good Intentions Paving Company is sort of an indie standard now isn't it?

Anyway, this is very nice indeed:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gzM-3XzMjQQ

Curious what those who hate Newsom's voice would make of this cover.

"A bunch of years back", eleven to be precise, but shut up, 2010 was yesterday. Sometimes I even forget that she put out Divers after that.
Skimmed through the comments at the time of release, goddamn that thread was a happy mess.
The cover is a nice performance but really lacks the piano and the style is really softened and the dynamics ironed out. It's almost a different song.

It does highlight just how strong Newsom is at writing original and complicated melodies, but yeah, the original has a lot more personality.

In my initial Joanna obsession phase, back around when Ys came out, I DLed a lot of random covers of songs from Milk-Eyed Mender. A lot of those are great because her voice was so polarizing and different then (read: worse). But for any subsequent stuff, not sure I've ever heard a cover of her that I preferred to the original.

Would love for her to rerecord MEM now. Would be fantastic with some light tasteful accompaniment, but even if she kept it a solo affair, it would be revelatory to have a nice studio-quality copy of her singing all those songs now that she can sing.

I do really enjoy The Decemberists' version of "Bridges and Balloons"

Re: that video, I don't think I've ever seen anyone capo at the 10th fret before!

Hah, I was thinking exactly that

I love MEM, probably still my favourite of her records. My daughter was obsessed with it a few years back, when she was 3 or so, and knew all of Inflammatory Writ off by heart, along wih a few others. She would demand it whenever in our car, or indeed anybody's car, and both sets of our parents were entirely dumbfoudned by Newsom's voice when they heard it.

She's not so fussed about Newsom now and probably doesn't remember the words to the songs anymore - she's big into King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard at the moment - but I have a photo of Joanna that Steve Gullick took of her when we were covering her at SXSW 2004 to put up in my daughter's bedroom when I get around to getting it framed, and I'd still like to take her to see Joanna play live, if and when she ever plays here again.

kinda love that she's still not on streaming (afaik?)

I suspect she never will be

also, I think about the title to this thread often, and it always makes me giggle to think that a new Joanna Newsom album could singlehandedly cause blogs (whatever they were) to come crashing down. Seems quaint now.

kinda love that she's still not on streaming (afaik?)

she's on apple music like the rest of drag city, they're still holding out with spotify

The subtitle in this thread wasn't a suggestion that her record release would overwhelm traffic to music blogs, it was a response to the article in NOW Magazine suggesting that, because Have One On Me didn't break sales records, therefore blogs/Pitchfork/music criticism were revealed as impotent.

don't spoil it for me

Joanna Newsom could power her own cryptocurrency with the heat generated from those takes

I love MEM, probably still my favourite of her records. My daughter was obsessed with it a few years back, when she was 3 or so, and knew all of Inflammatory Writ off by heart, along wih a few others. She would demand it whenever in our car, or indeed anybody's car, and both sets of our parents were entirely dumbfoudned by Newsom's voice when they heard it.

― burnt hombre (stevie), Tuesday, June 15, 2021 9:19 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Is this your daughter: baby singing sprout and the bean ?

Ha! No, that's not her I'm afraid...

I've been jamming this recently, but despite the medieval joplinisms my senescent brain keeps trying to turn all of the songs into "donald, where's yer troosers?"

There is a blacksmith and there is a shepherd and there is a butcher boy
And there is a barber who's cutting and cutting away at my only joy

I saw a rabbit as slick as a knife and as pale as a candlestick
And I had thought it'd be harder to do but I caught her and skinned her quick, held her there

Kicking and mewling upended unspooling unsung and blue
Told her wherever you go little runaway bunny I will find you

And then she ran
As they're liable to do

Be at peace baby, and be gone
Be at peace baby, and be gone