Vinyl giveaway details at the end of the review.
Joanna Newsom
Have One On Me
Drag City
out February 23rd
84/100
[Rating Scale]

I’ve been trying to review this Joanna Newsom album for a couple weeks now, and damn if it isn’t difficult. Ironic, because the album opens with Newsom repeating the word “easy” in her distinctive and captivating voice. Have One On Me, which spans three discs and clocks in at over two hours, is anything but easy.

For one thing, there’s the sheer mass of the thing. When I review an album, I generally like to listen to it, in its entirety, at least four or five times. With Have One On Me, that’s a full day’s work. Compared to most albums, which generally run around forty or fifty minutes these days, it’s gargantuan.

It’s more than size, though, that makes this a tough release to digest. The album is complex, layered, subtle. It’s so multi-faceted as to appear schizophrenic. There are songs on the album that certainly stand out – “Good Intentions Paving Company,” “Baby Birch,” and “Go Long,” to name a few – but the tracks also have a tendency to bleed together. Yes, Have One On Me is easier to comprehend than Newsom’s last release, Ys. But then again, so are most collegiate physics classes.

Excuses, excuses. I could go on to talk about the labyrinthine lyrical depth or the dynamic range that alternates between lush and barely audible, but I won’t (other than that brief mention). The fact of the matter is that Joanna Newsom is alienating to some and endearing to others. And for me, reviewing this album was a bit like putting together a puzzle, finishing, and still needing time to decipher what the picture on the puzzle was. I didn’t love Ys, and I expected to dislike Have One On Me. But what I originally saw as self-indulgent, I now see as necessary – this album needs room to spread its wings, it needs corners to work itself into. And so it comes to this: Despite feeling like I can’t quite grasp all of the moving parts, I am enchanted by this album. Continue reading →