Categories : Folk + Roots, Music Reviews, Rock + Pop.
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Rating: n/a Reviewer: Garth Paulson |
That’s right, not applicable. Though I’m usually apprehensive of assigning a rating based upon my subjective impressions of an album at the best of times, I just can’t bring myself to do it for Joanna Newsom’s latest, the triple album Have One on Me, for two reasons:
1) Even though this review is being written more than a week after the album has been released—absurdly slow by internet standards—there simply hasn’t been enough time for anyone to fully wrap their head around Newsom’s 18 song, two hour long opus. It’s been said elsewhere, but the true character of Have One on Me, its status as shining success or glorious failure and its cultural significance, or lack thereof, won’t be revealed until we’ve all had a lot more time to wear an ass groove into the thing.
2) As mentioned above, a review is no more than an individual’s opinion. Hopefully it’s founded on sound knowledge and is defended in a convincing manner, but an opinion nonetheless. As should be obvious from point number one, I haven’t formed an opinion on the album to a point I’m satisfied with at this time so I don’t feel particularly comfortable telling any readers who are still hanging around through this self-indulgent wankery whether I think they should like Have One on Me or not. They should certainly listen to it, but this is an album that is destined to cause very personal reactions based on listeners possessing the necessary patience and willingness to put in the requisite work Newsom demands. Frankly, I’m unimportant in the process.
There are, however, some things that we can safely talk about. For one, the album is long. Obvious, I know, but it deserves repeating. In ways, it’s even longer than its two-hour runtime suggests. 14 of the songs clock in at over six minutes and with Newsom’s distinctive pixie voice, harp-based songwriting and tangled, literary lyrics, Have One on Me is sure to leave even the most eager listeners exhausted once it’s run its course. Hell, you have to run a marathon just to meet the album halfway and there’s certainly a part of me that questions the worth of doing so.
Then I listen to the damn thing though, and I can’t help but feel convinced. If it wasn’t so clear that Have One on Me isn’t accessible at all, I’d be tempted to call it Newsom’s most accessible entry to date. The rough edges and potentially grating vocal tics found on Newsom’s debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender have been largely filed away and the album doesn’t share the audacious pretentiousness of the five song, heavily orchestrated, Ys.
Instead, it showcases some of Newom’s most assured songwriting. The title track does the orchestrated sprawl of Ys in a more penetrable fashion as strings swell and percussion clatters around Newsom’s harp and surprisingly earnest vocal delivery of one of her now signature short story (not short, story) songs. ‘Good Intentions Paving Company’ smolders delightfully to downright peppy piano melody, Newom’s voice wavering through a relatively straightforward love song. ‘Go Long’ milks powerful emotion from just Newsom’s voice and her harp plucking, a bare bones set up she’d seemingly abandoned with Ys. ‘You and Me, Bess’ makes the case for Newsom to constantly adorn her idiosyncratic songs with as many horns as possible.
With its Brobdingnagian length, Have One on Me, certainly contains its share of bloat, but it’s maddeningly difficult to identify where it takes place. Taken individually, each of the album’s 18 songs are triumphs, major or minor, which only makes the whole more intimidating to approach, considering how thoroughly it denies being digested in morsels. Surely Newsom’s work would be more easily understood if it adhered to a more traditional album length or even if it followed a Radiohead Kid A/Amnesiac release model, but Have One on Me is stubbornly the way it is and, so far at least, doesn’t work any other way, if it works as a unit at all.
So there’s that problem again; just what is Have One on Me? It’s too early to say. Would it be better if it were shorter? Yes, but I have no idea where to start the bloodletting. Is it a success or a failure? Is both at the same time, possibly one and possibly neither an acceptable answer? Do I like it? Sure I do, but I have trouble talking psyching myself up to actually listen to it. Should you like it? I have no fucking idea.
