Lasttime Joanna Newsom played the Pabst Theater she was on tour with a well-used29-piece orchestra, which painstakingly reconstructed the labyrinthinearrangements of her 2006 album, Ys.For her return appearance Friday night, though, Newsom pared her band down to alean five-piece ensemble, accommodating the leaner lineup with scaled-backrearrangements that left the band plenty of downtime, leaving the spotlightsquarely on Newsom and her harp. The more intimate treatment was fitting for atour behind Newsom’s new album, Have Oneon Me. Ys sought to awe throughsheer scale and grandeur, but Have One onMe is a much looser, freer record, despite what its daunting two-hourplaying time suggests.
Have One on Me is also her mostpersonal album, the first that feels more about Joanna Newsom than about JoannaNewsom’s quixotic fantasies. Marrying her signature medieval imagery withovertly autobiographical shadings, Newsom’s new songs ruminate on intertwiningthemes of love, madness and homecoming. On “Have One on Me,” Newsom imaginesthe exiled mistress of Bavarian King Ludwig II poisoning her lover with aspiteful toast that lends both the album its title. On “In California,” Newsomdrops the historical pretenses altogether, setting the action in her belovedhome state, which she reveals as the secret to her otherwise guarded heart.When Cupid’s arrow finally lands, it strikes deep. “Sometimes I am so in lovewith you,” she chimes, “like a little clock that trembles on the edge of thehour/ only ever callings out, ‘Cuckoo, cuckoo.’” Later in the song, she tauntsherself with those words in a menacing refrain: “Coo-koo; coo-koo.”
“InCalifornia”was a highlight of Newsom’s set Friday, a nine-minute downpour of mixedemotions, with each harried couplet doubling down on the stakes of the last.“Some nights I just never go to sleep at all,” Newsom exclaimed, “and I stand/shaking in the doorway like a sentinel, all alone, bracing like the bow upon aship, and fully abandoning any thought of anywhere but home.” Her band heldback, emerging only periodically to stress Newsom’s sentiments with austerepunctuations.
Theirorchestrations were taut and clever, but Newsom probably could have forgone theband altogether and the show wouldn’t have suffered. Over the years she’s grownmore comfortable on stage, more capable of filling it on her own. Her voice hasmellowed in inviting ways, too, loosing some of the tart edge that drove awayso many listeners. She’s shaped it into an instrument with the same expressive,pleasantly hypnotic qualities as her harp, and Friday night she used it to sellsome of her most candid songs yet.
Photo by CJ Foeckler
