Joanna Newsom- Have One on Me (2010) [Drag City] // Grade: A

If Joanna Newsom’s weirdo-cool squawk of a voice ruled The Milk-Eyed Mender, and Ys had its so-grand arrangements, then Have One on Me is theoretically the happy middle ground between the two. Except there’s nothing middle about it. It’s the highest ground—the skyscraper ground, troposphere ground—because this girl? She can actually sing. For real. The new Joanna Newsom has a voice like razor blades, like pocket knives; not some thoroughly modern quirk but an honest-to-god, goosebump-inducing instrument. And if that’s not enough to sway you, let me just say this: Newsom’s always sort of annoyed me, and now I love her almost as much as I love Kate Bush. Or at least, I love them in a similar way.

Because they’re kindred spirits, Bush and Newsom. Both of them evocative, baroque, enamored with images of gardens and mud and Eden and dogs. Both of them softly inviting, but sometimes a little scary—eccentric mother-figures prone to total freak-outs. They create the strangest worlds—the Gaffas, the Organons—and ask little but that you please, come in, stay awhile. And you do, you will, because it’s difficult to turn away from the Have One on Me universe. It may sprawl across two-plus hours and three discs, sure, and be a tad emotionally draining (so much love, loss, life), but it’s like staying up all night with a book you just can’t close—from Joni Mitchell jaunts like “Good Intentions Paving Company” to the bluesy “Baby Birch” and epic, obstuse “Kingfisher”, Newsom’s songs are captivating and swirly, the sonic equivalent to a real page-turner, or falling through the looking glass. It doesn’t matter that you don’t know which way is up, what genre is what, which part is ending and if there’s even been a chorus at all; you just want to float along in this place for a few minutes longer.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that (emotional nakedness aside) Newsom’s on a serious technical high too. Whether her songs strip themselves to a sweetly plucked harp, maybe a piano, or blast with real Ys-like orchestral grandeur, there’s something that feels newly complete on Have One on Me, like Newsom grew from fledgling baby bird to king of the jungle without anyone realizing she was so fledgling in the first place. And that voice, careening flawlessly back and forth from whisper to squeal, its former gruffness just a surprising little accent; those lyrics, both percussive and smooth, elated and desperate, poetry in the least annoying sense of the term—everything about Newsom here screams “all grown up”. Totally gorgeous. And capable of completely facing any former skeptics.

- Rue Sauvage