hhaha "harpischord". You have a golden ear, Spirit. A true golden ear.







Yes.

Kind of with Montana here, although I'm not necessarily a huge fan of any of Joanna's albums. I do admire the decision to follow up a critically acclaimed, highly focused, fully formed work with a sprawling triple LP. To use a Montana-esque classic rock canon comparison, though, this isn't quite Exile On Main St. following Sticky Fingers. The former not only follows through with the promise of the song styles explored on the latter, but it actually builds its own distinct mood that you can really absorb by approaching the whole thing as a complete work. These new compositions are pretty tight, but I don't see anything special about the sequencing or how the songs work together to form a cohesive statement or whatever, other than the fact that it's really long and happens to be divided into three parts.

And if she had only released the six best songs from here, people would be more likely to call it inferior to Ys while probably not liking it as much as that album. I'm not certain of that, but it doesn't seem totally crazy.

I agree with Montana in regards to the album as a whole being somewhat unfocused. There are some fucking great songs on here though. Go Long and Baby Birch are pretty incredible peices of work.

I think it would have been a better album if it were shorter, but I still have only listened to it twice. I will probably grow to love the whole thing with more time. It was a similar thing with Y's

I agree that there doesn't seem to be a lot of coherence to the organization of the record as a whole. Still, so many great songs.

I kind of can't get over how good "Good Intentions Paving Company" is.

If you're approaching Have One On Me as an "album" and insist on listening to it from beginning to end each time that is nothing short of amazing. My job doesn't allow me 2+ hours of time during the day to absorb this and I don't have the time outside of work to take this in either.

I've done so twice since it leaked but now can only manage it in small chunks (both from an availability standpoint and patience). This may be fine w/ Newsom and how she predicted the final product would eventually be consumed once the recording process was over.

Either way, I'm finding this less and less impressive of a feat - or whatever you'd prefer to call it - and more a serious case of poor judgment.

I mean, if I were her business manager, I would have advised against this, obviously. There's probably two separeate good-to-great records in here, with some change left over.

I'm in no way familiar with how the recording process evolves. So, I can't figure out how she presented this to Drag City after it was dreamed up in her mind and how this final concept was approved by everyone that has to give their sign-off.

I'd love to know if there were any rational voices in the room that said, "Yes, it is impressive you have so much music - a lot of which is extremely good - but you're essentially making an album that only people who are unemployed or college students have the capacity to sit through from start to finish".

You're forgetting government employees (guilty). Hey, I write all day. Gotta block out the office noise somehow.

guaranteed that this 3 disc joanna newsom album sells more than any other drag city release this year, unless they have some unforeseen gem waiting in the wings.

sometimes the best business models are the least intuitive ones.

You can view the Drag City roster on their website and that is a fairly safe bet. There is not a huge audience for any of their artists and even if a website like P4K gives a Bill Callahan or Bonnie "Prince" Billy high marks not many people are going to rush out to buy the album.

The small corners of the world where a Joanna Newsom album gets hype of any kind will drive sales because people will want lyrics, photos, etc that comes with the packaging. And yes, that means it could be a big seller by Drag City standards and she'll consistently get sell out or near sell out crowds on tour.

What I'm suggesting is that there is an incredibly small percentage of people that will continue to enjoy this as a single piece of work beyond the next several months. And I would have trouble believing that will be satisfying to Newsom. No musician that has a back catalog like hers records 2+ hours of music and thinks "I don't give a shit if people eventually listen to 4 or 5 songs off this and discard the rest! It is a huge seller for Drag City!"

I could be totally wrong and giving her too much credit in that regard. My gut is telling me that the presentation of this album is going to be in the long run a huge failure.

I'd be cool if they pared down the record to 12 tracks/2 discs. It would make it more digestible, that's for sure. Something like:

Easy
Have One On Me
81
Good Intentions
Baby Birch
On A Good Day
In California
Jackrabbits
Go Long
Esme
Kingfisher
Does Not Suffice

Or some variation thereof.

agreed.

this is a harp right?

would you consider Morrissey whimsical??

Twelve tracks would probably be a good cutoff for this. Maybe 10.

What's the over/under on this getting BNM'd?

i'm gonna go ahead and say i'm pretty sure this will get BNM'd, especially since "good intentions paving company" already scored a "best new track" which is typically a signifier. see the new gil scott-heron, hot chip, beach house, etc. etc.

doesn't always happen though. see: YACHT, Tiny Vipers. But it probably will.

yeah, there's always the random pitchfork curveball.

as far as i remember YACHT got it, but HEALTH did not.

yeah it's halfway down the page

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/best/albums/3/

Oh, my mistake. For some reason I thought it got a 6.something.

Sade didn't get BNM. there's another. They're the exception rather than the rule though.

if they reviewed each CD separately then I could see one of them getting a BNM, but the whole fucking thing? It's ridiculous to claim this is all killer no filler as someone mentioned earlier.

Agreed. They did go kinda crazy for Ys, but for as long and overwrought as that is, this is far more bloated.

That said they'll probably give it a 9.8 or something and declare it a revolution in songwriting :\

i dunno man. i'm pretty sure there are some future-music-nerds-to-be who are still just THC-ridden sperm cells in their soon-father-to-be's loins that are going to have their minds blown in 2030 when they find out that there is a female singer-songwriter who played the harp(!), sang songs about dragons and spiders and stuff, and released a triple lp in 2010. it will probably seem pretty profound to them. this album has at least more "lasting power" than local natives, surfer blood, or any shit like that.

^^ Far more likely, IMO.

not bloated at all, just expansive.

It's really not though. Each track is tethered by a carefully woven thread which keeps the listener interested. This sort of technique is used in good storytelling. You can be "long and rambling" while still keeping the story/quality intact and focused. I wish I could say the same for the new one.

"Baby Birch" is pretty much the only thing standing out to me right now; mostly because it rips the melody from "Amazing Grace". The ending is just pointless tacked-on-ness.

I don't really know how you can love Ys and not love the majority of this record. By and large, it's more of the same in terms of quality songcraft.

I don't feel that way at all. It seems night and day.

As odd as it feels to be defending Joanna Newsom against Montana, the ending of "Baby Birch" is emphatically not "tacked on pointlessness." The song really does develop in the second half and starts adding percussive, almost polyrhythmic textures and elements that really bring out great things in the chorus and the melodies.

It's strange how everyone was talking about how hard it would be to absorb two hours of new music, and yet a few days later everyone has already decided that it's a disappointment. It's not Ys, OK. But it was never going to be Ys. That was 5 songs, this is 18. It's something completely different. You have to engage with it in a different way. How many of you loved Ys the first time you listened to it? Or the second time? This is twice as long as that and takes a bit more work. I'm several listens in and I feel like I only barely know the first record. The songs are constantly revealing new ways to listen to them, emotional handholds, nuances, theme. I haven't even read the lyrics yet, and a large part of my enjoyment of Newsom songs are the stories she tells. "Emily" wasn't nearly as good until I knew the story and the characters and the details.

As an album, I still don't know, but as a collection of songs this record is absolutely fantastic. In the long run, people aren't going to care if they can sit down and listen to all two hours at once. They'll just be glad to have all this Joanna material. For better or worse, I could put all of Joanna's songs in a single folder and play it on shuffle. Her work for me has never been about the album experience but about getting lost in the individual worlds. With lengths sometimes stretching to 9 and 10 minutes, it's a lot easier to enjoy the merits of each song instead of judging them by how they work within the structure of an album.

Your post certainly shoots down my "long term failure" declaration if success in Joanna Newsom's mind equates to selling used copies of Have One On Me 20 years from now...

my point is that she's obviously not concerned about "selling" anything. she's quite apparently more interested in making the artistic statement that she wants to make, and from my perspective, it is a singular and compelling one.

The album is too long and the songs aren't that great. IMO.

^^This


interestingly I don't see this up for sale on itunes. ( I know it's out tomorrow but usually they have most albums up for presale) Seems like a bold move to forsake the largest MP3 selling vendor.
Oh that joanna!

dragcity's website fucking blows in general so its not too surprising they're not on top of this.

Drag City has the MP3 download for $17.99.

I'm between this and Montana... The songs of Ys definitely carried more weight, were more lush, and I think will be more memorable in the long run, although of course it's too early to say that for sure. Have One on Me is thinner and spread further, which is why "bloated" is a dumb word for it. It definitely sounds like these songs didn't have as long to bake as those of Ys. All that said, Have One on Me remains a lovely album that I will likely listen to a lot of this year. Joanna's voice has improved and her songwriting remains strong.

nice music to spin on my hard drive while paying bills w/ my wife.

Sounds like a real party.

I'm starting to wonder who wrote the songs on Ys. I'm also finding"Provenance" unlistenable. There are some nice lyrics, but it sounds like such a try-hard indie arrangement. The chorus sounds like something Macy Grey would do.

Van Dyke Parks.

Not 100%, of course, but he's one of the main reasons that the work is seen as successful. Not to mention the sonic contributions of Jim O'Rourke and Steve Albini.

yr missing van dyke parks is all montana.

edit: jinx with paves.

Word.

yeah, I'm down $500 and feel like I've been relentlessly screwed. that certainly describes somebody's idea of a good time.

Thx. This explains a fuckload. I knew Albini was involved on Ys but not the other two.

Each time I listen to this new one I'm reminded more and more of Pros and Cons of Hitchiking by Waters. It's a rambling, unfocused and very self indulgent mess. What saves it for Waters is that he's truly a madman and you buy into the spectacularly failing(and possibly imploding)laboratory experiment. Waters displays this fierce kinetic sense which gives weight to the material. So far on this new Newsom I'm getting the rambling, unfocused and the self indulgent but no real weight to the tunes or any kind of energy.

I'm just totally 100% confused at the disparity in song quality between Ys and Have One On Me. I'm grasping at straws trying to figure this one out.

provenance is the worst track. agreed.

Just read that Fleet Foxes frontman, Robin Pecknold, will be joining Joanna on her North American Spring tour. Should be...interesting?

I seriously have no idea what you're talking about. Ys is one of my favorite albums of all time, and I think there's plenty of great tracks on this record. Maybe not totally equivalent, but at least as good as the songs on Milk Eyed Mender (okay, not Clam Crab Cockle).

It's like we're hearing different completely different albums.