In the folk boom of the 60s there were many new Bob Dylans. Some disappeared as quickly as they’d been hyped. Others forged their own identity in the shadow of the great man. What they had in common was that none of them were Bob Dylan. None of them even came close…except perhaps Joni Mitchell.
It seems we’re currently in the midst of a new folk movement of sorts. Tonight’s support acts are the gloomily introspective Six Organs Of Admittance, the soft psyche sighs of White Magic, and the plaintively traditional Alasdair Roberts. All of them folk, all of them talented, but none of them are Joanna Newsom. None of them even come close.
What Joanna does may take a lifetime to understand. We can start with the harp, in all its daunting six foot elegance. When Joanna plays, she hugs it tight to her body letting each string vibrate through the wooden frame and into her bones. Her hands dance in ever intricate patterns; bouncing through rhythms from Senegal and Mali as she plucks out the war allegory “What We Have Known”, a song inspired by her father (she asks reviewers to mention that: “He’d be very pleased”). Her voice is primitive and naive and beautiful. Half influenced by the field recordings of Virginian grandmother Texas Gladden (whose version of the traditional “Three Little Babes” Joanna performs tonight) and half a sound she’s had since childhood; an un-trainable sweet blues.
Tonight she is suffering due to blisters brought on in Bristol the night before. So, for the first time, we get Joanna on the joanna too. The songs on her debut album “The Milk Eyed Mender” were initially written on piano then transposed for harp (essentially an upturned piano without the black keys – there are pedals for sharps and flats). She’s less assured on this instrument but it’s a rare treat to hear as is the addition of flautist Ariella Daly for two numbers.
The evening also brings new songs: the dark and pulsing “Sawdust And Diamonds”, all eight minutes and fifty seconds of it, and the Neil Young-esque “Only Skin”. These are both equal to anything familiar in the set but the highlight is the provisionally titled “Cosmia”. It’s her most musically complex work to date; modulating, symphonic and moving. The normally dense, layered, poetry of her words gives way to a bare and honest cry of “And I miss your precious heart”. All the time we’re aware of the harp strings tearing at the newly raw flesh of her fingers.
What’s evident from the unbridled joy she seems to get just from playing for us is that Ms Newsom is going to be around making great art for a long time to come. To put things in perspective, Joanna Newsom is a better songwriter than Joni Mitchell was at this stage in her career. And no one came close to Joni…at least till now.
