Two days ago was the tenth anniversary of the release of Joanna Newsom’s Have One on Me. As many of you know, I saw her in concert, during her most recent brief tour, seven times—it shouldn’t come as a surprise that her most ambitious project, that two-hour triple-LP beast, is one of my favorite albums of all time (hence certainly of the previous decade). So I’m taking this opportunity to babble about this most important record before ultimately posting an albums-of-the-decade list elsewhere on the site.
I hadn’t listened to the original Have One on Me in its entirety for a while, having been addicted to bootleg recordings instead (I’ve got about 35 concerts, mostly lossless, hit me up if you want any). In addition to that, being as long as it is, I thought the record would have an unfair advantage in my (upcoming) 2010s albums ranking if taken as a whole, so I wanted to consider it based only on its constituent parts, three separate LPs. I poured some sparkling water in a wine glass, and over three days, I concentrated on one disc a night. I can confidently say that the individual LPs would top my list, even by their respective lonesomes.
I often hear the myth of certain pieces of art emotionally overpowering viewers just out of the sheer power of their beauty. Usually it’s fine art—somebody staring into the void of a Rothko and weeping, for example. I get swept away by art all the time, film, music, fine art, whatever it may be, but even with the pieces that affect me the most, there’s always a small piece of me detached, simply appreciating. In a way, I’m distracted by the craft. I’m internally explaining the craft as I take in the piece of art. Have One on Me is the only exception, as of writing. There are phrases, words, chord progressions, single tones that cause a swell of emotion within me, and I have no explanation why. Somehow, the album feels like it lives in a vacuum. Of course it has cultural references—Newsom loves her old Americana—and I do hear influence from Roy Harper, Richard and Linda Thompson, Vashti Bunyan, Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, etc, etc. But then she also always mentions Ruth Crawford Seeger and Terry Riley as influences, so in the end does the album really sound like any one of those artists’ works? No.
Can I talk about the actual content of the album? I’m not sure I can. Early last year I wrote an essay about Newsom (which I’ll release at some point), and I talked a lot about her other three albums; I had such an easy time, until it came to Have One on Me. I just go in circles. I don’t think it’s simply an inability to talk about a medium that I’m not personally creatively involved in; it doesn’t stop me from writing about other music. Have One on Me hits me at such a deep level, perfectly speaks to my sensibilities, that it almost seems like talking about it is too intimate a disclosure.
So anyways, I’ll be posting an albums of the previous decade list soon. This will top it.