Here’s Lola – ta da! – to do her famous Spider Dance for you…
Posted by: danhartland on: March 2, 2010
Have One On Me, by Joanna Newsom
On a scale of 1-10, where 1 is way too early to discuss Joanna Newsom’s new collection of songs, Have One On Me, and 10 is just the right time to do so, we are at -1. I call the release a ‘collection of songs’ rather than ‘album’ because Have One On Me, even more than Ys (2006) before it, seems to raise its eyebrow at such irrelevant terms as ‘record’ or ‘LP’: a three-disc boxset of songs ranging from friendly 3 minute ditties (’81′) to 11 minute monsters (‘Have One On Me’), this latest from Newsom refuses even the lip service Ys, a five-track threepenny-opera-on-acid, paid to the concept of the traditional rock record.
Not that Have One On Me doesn’t also share much with Newsom’s most straight-forward record, her debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender. In that this third proper full release consists of songs played for the songs themselves rather than a grand aesthetic – gone are the flamboyant theatrics of Ys – then Have One On Me is also a return to a straighter bat: the glorious ‘Good Intentions Paving Co.’ is as infectious a piece of songwriting as you’ll hear all year, despite its seven minute running time.
But these songs twist and narrate far more than something like ‘Inflammatory Writ’ or ‘The Sprout and the Bean’. Recalling ‘Monkey and Bear’ from Ys in content if not in tone (“Miss Montez, the Countess of Lansfeld / appealed to the King of Bavaria”), ‘Have One On Me’ is full of personified arachnids and fabulous phrases – “I saw a chunk of thrown coal / As if god himself spat like a cornered rat.” On the other hand, opener ‘Easy’ woozes in and out of a swirling refrain, sounding grand and epic but on the level of lyrics being as plain a love song as Newsom can write.
The astute reader will have spotted all my examples are taken from the first CD. Like I said, -1. If the other two discs match the first for inventiveness and intelligence, however, Have One On Me will be hard to displace as ‘record’ of the year.
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71 is the number of an apartment we return to regularly in Whinfell Forest, Cumbria. We like it there.
‘We’ are Anna French and Dan Hartland. The Story and the Truth is a sort of inadequate catch-all term for what goes on here: we tend to talk about novels, history, food and fashion, politics and music, but there may also be photographs of soft toys and musicians. Stick around and see.
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Words We Like
The Weird, ed. Ann and Jeff VanderMeer
An astounding work of collecting-as-art, this compendium of 800,000 weird words is easily one of the most consistent genre anthologies I have read. Heterodox yet focused, it is fated to be the canonical text of weird fiction studies for some time to come - and deservedly so. The first-rank stories here - and there are many, not a few - are not excellent weird fiction. They are simply some of the best 20th century writing available in any mode. Not without its faults - but that is, ahem, the nature of the beast. Essential.
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Sonik Kicks, by Paul Weller
I haven't paid much attention to Weller - an artist who hangs heavy in my musical tutelage - since 2000's Heliocentric, an album of diverse interests which felt like a shot of crisp elegance in that year of Steps and 'N Sync. The records that followed it - particularly Illumination - were enough, however, to make those achievements a distant memory. There have been rumblings of a renaissance - 22 Dreams got great reviews - but only the sounds of Sonik Kicks have brought me back. Energetic, fierce and, best of all, creative, this sounds like a record from a much younger man. Weller has a lesson or two in him yet.
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1 | Unburdened Hooks: ‘Have One On Me’ Revisited « @Number 71
June 29, 2010 at 10:26 pm
[...] to Joanna Newsom’s Have One On Me with some regularity recently. I had a period between the first period of passionate consumption and this renewed interest when I didn’t listen to the record at [...]