Feb 282010
Elfin, harp-playing indie darling Joanna Newsom has released a triple album, Have One On Me, on Drag City. If you can’t get off on a three-album set of this Lady of the Woods then someone’s been slipping salt peter into your breakfast cereal! Contrary to initial reports, a bonus DVD of performances lacking sound is not being offered. Damn!
For purposes of sincere discussion, I pose the following questions:
- Has anyone heard this album yet? Does she use the triple-album format to stretch out, a la The Clash on Sandinista, or is it three albums worth of the harp-plucking, thumb-sucking, little girl musings we’ve come to know and love?
- How much more or less would you like Newsom’s music if she looked like Kathy Bates?
- Is Newsom’s success in any way a testament to the last 35 years of punk/indie rock?
I truly hope to gain some insights from fans of Ms. Newsom.
Has Newsom dated Paul Thomas Anderson yet?
If Newsom looked like Kathy Bates, we would never have heard her ‘music.’
To connect two threads, I pose the following question:
Which is worse?
A) Someone like Joanna Newsom, who makes polarizing arty music?
B) Someone like will i. am, who makes polarizing popular music?
I look forward to your responses.
I like Kathy Bates.
Who doesn’t like Kathy Bates, but you’ve left the question unanswered.
You all might be surprised, but Newsom is fantastic live. Part of your problem is that she’s heavily influenced by Van Dyke Parks, a rather polarizing artist to RTH.
I always wonder if her and/or her record company’s strategy is to promote her like she’s some long lost cult artist from the early 70s. I don’t have a problem with this, but I do think her songwriting at times is a little too imitative of what has come before.
For those interested, the new album is streaming at http://www.npr.org/music
I wish Song Cylce had been as tuneful as I find Newsom’s music. I completely agree with your perceived marketing strategy, and I think it’s really well done.
I liked my share of Kate Bush when I was young – and she got a lot of slack from me for her art-chick appeal – but I can’t get by the idea of worship for Newsom for her music alone.
Who ever wanted to hear anyone play a harp?
How often does anyone sit around and think, “Gee, I’d really like to hear a woman singing with a precocious, girlish lisp!”
To answer one of KingEd’s questions, I think her music would be relegated to the depths of underground/outsider collectors at best if she looked like Kathy Batese. I can’t believe she’d get a listen from most indie rock fans if she didn’t look like a cute hobbit or one of Santa’s elves.
Is her success a testament to the cultural shifts instituted by punk and then the indie rock of the ’80s and beyond? I guess so, and it’s not so bad. Those Warner Bros catalog credibility enabling artists like Van Dyke Parks have no place on major labels today. It’s not the worst thing that they can find a place on large indie labels.
I don’t mind people playing the harp: Chico Marx looked cool doing it. Really, it’s a stringed instrument: what’s the hang-up?
Non-traditional (for rock) stringed instruments, like the dulcimer, were popular in folk circles–the tradition Newsom works in.
As for the question of would Newsom be as popular if she weren’t seen as “pretty,” seems like this question gets asked often (see Case, Neko). It’s getting rather tired, I think.
I believe Newsom’s voice is certainly distinctive enough to create the requisite “drama” without needing some sort of male adolescent fantasy to go along with it.
I don’t think the question of “if she weren’t a babe” is so tired as obvious and obviously uncomfortable to hetero males with balls the size of bags of concrete. I’ve just heard her music recently, and was expecting something like her Nevada City female indie female counterpart, Alene Diane. My immediate thought was, “America’s answer to Kate Bush!” I realized immediately that the harp was basically a prop, and part of her gestalt.
None of us males wake up in the morning and yearn for excited over-the-top girly singing, but as a fiddle player who has learned from Irish and Scottish masters, I can tell you the archtype of the beautiful young goddess singing with her harp atop the mist-shrouded hill on her Celtic Twilight Odyssey is a powerful one for women. Ignore it at your peril.
To go adolescent male, her butt looks amazing. Yes, I’m not proud that that adds to my listening pleasure. And I feel guilty when I wonder what Bill Callahan’s (the artist formerly known as Smog who’s music I like) marriage to her was like. Outside of the sex, what did they enjoy together? What did they talk about?
larinx, thanks for giving this some thought and personal consideration. One thing I want to make clear about my question regarding Newsom’s looks: this aspect of her appeal is not only directed at adolescent male fantasies. She’s cute. She’s what a heterosexual woman might call “adorable.” She’s a woman a large segment of educated, arts-loving young women can feel comfortable with – she’s not playing “the boys’ game.” I think for those women the Kathy Bates issue could also be a stumbling block. Regardless is this a question you don’t want to face? Probably, and I can understand why.
I think the question is not only tired, but naive. You act surprised that she’s putting on an act, ignoring the fact that all good performers (Jagger, Dylan) are skilled at self-invention. She’s simply performing, dude.
And there are women who are not considered as petite or elfin who have become stars. For example, Mama Cass.
Doctor: all that’s true, but you have to admit big-ness is far less tolerated in female pop/rock performers. We had a Last Man Standing a while ago that went on *forever*, listing very large rocking men. I bet we couldn’t get past 10 or 15 very large rockin’ women.
Thanks for the link, dr. john. I’m working my way up my list of fun things to do today, and after listening to that for a little while, the next thing is “Get Hit In Face With Hammer.”
I don’t care what she looks like. I can’t hear a nice ass, and her music blows.
The reason for the Kathy Bates question is because the music is SO UNLIKE WHAT PEOPLE USUALLY CHOOSE TO LISTEN TO. Can’t you get that? I understand that a handful of people would give the music of Joanna Newsom the time of day based on the music alone, but she gets a lot of attention that I can’t imagine she’d get if she was playing that stuff and looking like Mama Cass. And that’s not to slight the beauty of Mama Cass, who from all accounts got as much cock as her All-American Beauty Queen bandmate Michelle Phillips.
Put it another way: we don’t spend much time discussing contemporary R&B, but would chunky, clunky Aretha Franklin be able to make it as a superstar today without having to go on some life-threatening diet and makeover? I think not. She’d most likely be the studio voice behind the hits of a Fame school-trained model.
The question is fair and not naive considering the music Joanna Newsom is delivering. This stuff’s got no chance to be heard if she looks like Kathy Bates or even Kathy Baker. God bless her elfin good looks!
KingEd, I NOW get what you’re saying–which I find sad but true: new music doesn’t have a chance to be widely heard, if it isn’t wrapped in an attractive package.
And, I also now get why Brian Jones was so important to the long term success of the Stones. Without his good looks, the Stones would never have made their initial breakthrough that would later culminate in Exile on Main Street.
Indeed, maybe Newsom just released her version of Exile: three disc set of resolutely non-commercial songs.
I’ll sign on as a defender I’m sure she’s working too far out of King Ed “frame of rock” for him to sign on, but there’s lots of hot chicks making music (my favorite low-talent foxy babe is named “Essence”
http://essencemusic.com/photos.html) that ain’t getting nowhere. The sexism in the premise is lurking as well, I’ve never heard you ask “if Mick Jagger looked like Tad would he be as popular.”
JN definitely has her own style and sound, she’s instantly recognizable. She has a couple memorable songs I love and a fair amount of filler as well. On the new album she’s notably less chirpy as a singer and each release does have its own variation on her sound.
That said, a triple-LP (which is really a double pared down to digestible length) isn’t a great idea for any singer-songwriter; song-after-song of a singular perspective is bound to get monotonous. It would be different she had a bands-worth of songwriters to contribute, or if she was more experimental musically, willing to throw a “Revolution #9” into the mix to liven things up.
Oh and I’m all for the harp. Do we have to stay tied to the six-string guitar forever?
Glad to hear from you on this, dbuskirk. You say this:
Mick Jagger never caterwauled over a fucking harp! This isn’t a banjo or a flute. We’re talking HARP. The Stones came out of the gates playing a form of music that kids were hungry to hear. Not everybody had to like them and certainly his sex appeal played a great role in the band’s success, but if it were some troll like Eric Burdon leading the early Stones they still would have been more successful than Tad. Come on, The Animals were led by that troll and they did fine.
Yeah, it’s different today. Young people don’t think they need more guitar. They’re even bored with synths and mandolins. What they really want is to hear a fucking harp. Wake me when the next harp-playing artist sells ONE album to that indie rock crowd. Wake me when Kathy Bates is doing the caterwauling over the harp and anyone but you, my sincerely tasteful and visionary friend, cares hear.
To clarify, I meant would the Stones BE AS BIG AS THE WERE if Mick Jagger looked like Tad. (I only use Tad as a measurement of handsomeness, not of commercial success.) To say it de-legitimizes a woman’s music because their looks are part of their appeal is not a test men are put to. I’d say Kris Kristofferson is just as guilty as being a hunky romantic figure, in a manly sort of way.
I’m still not feeling your terror about the thought of a harp. Might Freud ask if it reminds you and a giant vagina with razor sharp teeth?
Otherwise I’m not sure what your barely-concealed disgust with her is about, other than the fact that her excessive femininity swings the furthest away from the power-chord roaring rock that sets the template of which RTH is forever in worship. Yep, you’re right, she fails as a rock act, in much the Joni Mitchell, The Roches and American Spring do (Who’d ever play air guitar to one of those acts?) GET HAPPY is a horrible heavy metal record too.
I get what you were saying about Jagger and Tad, but the question is not whether the Stones would have been AS big – like I said, they could have been as big as The Animals without Jagger. I’m talking about Newsom even getting on the radar without her looks – and that’s not to demean her music, which I actually don’t mind in small doses, or the role of good looks in music, which I think is valid and necessary, like it or not.
In this thread I find charges of sexism too easy and missing the point. My beefs are not so much with Newsom as they are with people falling over her who won’t acknowledge that her adorable, elfin charm is probably a HUGE part of her appeal. I am not convinced that if Kathy Bates hauled a harp up to the First Unitarian Church that there would be more than a dozen people in attendance – that is, even if Bates’ harp skills and voice/songs were exactly those of Newsom’s. Honestly, I think the most extreme sexism lurking in the “Kathy Bates issue” is really directed at a large segment of critics and fans slobbering over Newsom. Mr. Mod had to go and pull that ridiculous Fat Rockin’ Chicks thread, but isn’t that what he was getting at, that people charge me with being sexist for even raising the issue of Newsom’s looks while ignoring the fact that the rock music business has a long history of distancing itself from heavyset women?
Call me a harpist, if you must, because I find the harp a ridiculous, rich-kid instrument that has nothing to do with rock ‘n roll. I know what’s marketed as rock ‘n roll has broadened to include freak folk and all sorts of other non-rocking forms of music, but the harp goes too far for me. It’s great, on many levels, that the world has become so accepting and tolerant, but I’m not yet advanced enough to tolerate the harp.
Maybe I’ll come around to Newsom some day as more than a gimmicky version of some of the uberfemme artists you list. Like I’ve said all along, I find her music surprisingly decent in small doses. Her femininity appeals to me – and not just in a leering way. I’m sorry to have dragged her into this, but again, my beefs are with the critical reaction to her – and the reaction I get whenever I raise what seem like some legitimate points.
For instance, I ask who’s calling for a 3-album set of any artist, let alone a Lady of the Woods on harp? What happened to the days when, right or wrong, an artist’s feet were held to the fire for releasing a triple-album set? Aren’t we comfortable saying that George Harrison’s Apple Jam disc is a waste of time? Can’t we say this AND say that he could only get away with this because he’s a Beatle and not be accused of Beatle-ism? Aren’t we all comfortable with the criticism that The Clash went one album too far with Sandinista? I mean, I like that album a lot in its 3-album format, but I’m not on guard when someone questions that decision. Few in this thread have commented on that question.
The other thing I asked that’s barely been touched is the question of whether the allowance of an artist like Newsom – for whatever reasons – is a positive or negative outcome of punk and indie rock over the last 35 years. There really was other stuff I wanted to pick at beside what I figured was the “gimme” KingEd being a dick point about Kathy Bates. Can’t we all just admit that the Kathy Bates point is relevant, whether we agree with it or not, and get into the issues I wanted to raise about your actual musical values regarding a triple-album release of mystical harp music under the banner of “indie rock” rather than whatever stuff like The Riverdance is marketed under? Are you comfortable with the lines being blurred between indie rock and The Riverdance?
Um, dr john, that was Harpo Marx playing the harp, not Chico.
But I can’t wait for Newsom’s harp-based song-by-song reconstruction of Exile in Guyville back into Exile on Main Street.
The Pince Nez strikes!
In addition to this comment, I also wanted to address what Ed wrote about Aretha and if she was starting out today. First off, she wasn’t nearly as heavy in the ’60s. Also, I think the above is true for Caucasian women, but not African-Americans. Curviness is (thankfully) a bit more tolerated for African-American women like Jill Scott, for example.
Of course, on the other hand Britney, Lady Gaga, Christina Aguilera, et al. are nearly interchangeable from one another based upon their looks.
I think Joanna Newsom underlines my waning allegiance/belief/interest in “rock” and all it stands/stood for and its future possibilities. Hearing JN wailing such non-cliche riffs on her harp/axe leads me to keep the faith that in ten years the vagina-like instrument will completely usurp the guitar in rock circles. Alice Coltrane is the new Chuck Berry, you’ll see.
Is “Riverdance Music” your short-hand for Celtic music, like people in their twenties who guess every male pop recording of the 50’s is Sinatra? Again pointing to Newsom’s alligences outside Ed’s rock kingdom. Unless Ed has unheard insights into Jean Ritchie and Julie Tabor…
I’m sorry but I can’t accept the bad faith argument that lurks behind the Kathy Bates reference. As soon as we say this is relevant, then the value of Newsom’s work has already got one strike against it–before we even have a chance to debate it.
But I am fascinated by the way this (triple) album is making people crazy. The Riverdance comparison is way off-base, almost irrational, even. I can’t wait for the next attempted put-down: a triple album of harp music, oh no what’s next, a box set of zither music?
Wow. (Wearing a backwards baseball-cap, shilling for Burger King) “I love this place!” (Among for other reasons, I came from a little quaint obsolete village above Philadelphia, Jarrettown)
KingEd – I totally agree with your larger point, and think you express it well. Of course, to objectify, do you hear the good-looking ass when you listen to the music, and as you pointed out, how is it you get to listen to it in the first place?
No-one’s mentioned Janis Joplin, and all the recent reviews I’ve read of her snarkily put her down “Well her catalog isn’t too impressive” (and having seen Leonard Cohen last summer – when is RTH going to have another what’s the most rocktastic concert you’ve seen recently poll?”) she got some, as my friends talked about Leonard as being labeled as a “dirty old man”.
In the hallowed halls of RTH, who would argue that sex is not a part of the popularity of music? And with the almost rockhomophilia obsessions of RTH, like dressing your favorite male rockstar in favorite mustache, pants, and headgear? Or whose sweaty hands would beat whose at some sport?
That said, if I heard some harp mixed fairly up, I would try listen to and appreciate it.
And I do get a kick out of stuff that gets out there because the “little girls” understand one thing and the “men” see another.
kinged probably can’t get over once shelling out money for this douche: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XOdKG9Z_Xw
to ignore the breadth of the harp and newsom’s role in expanding its vocabulary is asinine. when the discussion is zz top or the dbs people here are very attuned to the nuances of each musician. get a little outside of your comfort zone and forget it. alice coltrane has long been dismissed as both john’s woman and a harp player, but listen to a sampling of her work and try learning something while gazing at newsom’s hindquarters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bYLpz2HPk0U
get a clue about the harp’s place in classical music. listen to the way xavier de maistre, for instance, plays debussey. hear what others have tried to do in merging the harp and rock music, and you may begin to give newsom the credit she deserves. try this on for size, kinged, if you think newsom’s swimming upstream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KKvlB3u-efU
Well, I just listened to my first (and last) Joanna Newsom song. I picked the Sprout and the Bean because it had the most youtube hits. I made it 45 seconds into it before I gave it the hook.
Maybe I’m an unsophisticated lunkhead, or maybe I’m afraid of those mysterious vagina teeth that Buskirk was going on about but that shit is just too cloying and precious for me. Now I’m going to have to listen to some Bad Company or something to reset my psychological balance.
Am I listening to “The Sprout and the Bean’ now. I would like this song if the vocal were not so irritating. Is this an older song of hers? The review of the new album on Slate.com today says she eschews the Ralph Wiggum-style vocals of her past work.
I think I like Final Placement better than Ms Newsom.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2vZZ54mygo
I’m glad I didn’t have to do the Marx brothers pince nez. I would imagine people skip past the harp solo in those films only slightly less often than the corny “love interest” singing the main tune. But maybe I’m wrong, and the weirdness of sticking a harp solo in the middle of a musical comedy is novel enough to warrant repeated viewing.
The harp is the best part of the stuff I sampled. I can’t get past Newsom’s voice or some of her vocal choices, but that’s just a matter of taste. I could see the harp working as a modern instrument becuase I suspect with the proper effects or creative usage, you really could treat it like a piano at times, or like an acoustic guitar at others. I just think it’ll always seem twee or gimmicky on it’s own.