I was recently offered a ticket to see Joanna Newsom at the Dome, only the second night of a tour that would see her performing live for the first time in three years. For some time this unique artist has been on the periphery of my attention, I was intrigued but could never quite decide if I was going to be a fan or not. There's something incredibly distinctive about what she does, of course it's the high-pitched vocals you notice first but the instrumentation is also very different from what we are used to hearing in contemporary music. This concert was going to be the make or break moment for me: I often find in live performances we can truly discover what it is that we love, or hate about a certain artist. Thankfully I was gratefully mesmerised throughout the show and left with a hunger to discover more – her unusual choice of instruments, arrangements and poetic lyrics all lend themselves to deeper inspection, so I thought I'd make her latest album Divers my starting point, as this material made up most of the setlist at the show.

The album begins with 'Anecdotes' followed by 'Sapokanikan', two songs that clearly made an impression upon me in the live show for they sounded like old friends when I heard them in the context of the album. 'Anecdotes' benefits from the additional strings on the recording, with their help the second half of the song turns into a truly magical fairy-tale experience. There are lots of military references in the dense, complex lyrics which conjur up, for me, a squad of soldiers lost somewhere on some battlefield, frightened for their lives and painfully aware of their own mortality. 'Sapokanikan' was the first single to be taken from the album, named after a Native American village which used to sit on the lower half of Manhattan Island, approximately where Grenwich Village is now. The song begins with a jolly enough sounding stripped back piano with hints of ragtime that breaks into cascades of twinkling notes and false builds with what sounds like keyboard brass. The song ends with a pair of voices singing in harmony that reach for ever higher heights, building tension and emotion, giving way to a gentler section with accompanying pan-pipes, perhaps representing the Native American villagers of the songs title.

The first section of 'Leaving The City' sounds like it could have been written for the Tudor court, and uses another synthetic brassy sound for tension – big wide keyboard notes that build to fill the space before an almost hip-hop beat comes in and carries the song forward, another beautiful bit of arrangement. 'Goose Eggs' has some great little unexpected bluesy bending electric guitar licks which combine with the baroque arpeggios and harpsichord to great effect – the medieval and 70s blues rock making for surprisingly good bed partners. 'Waltz Of The 101st Lightbourne' is full of lovely folksy violin lines, twisting up and down their melodies, and some clever drumming, providing the perfect amount of momentum to support the song. With 'The Things I Say' Joanna strips things down a step, leaving vocal and piano alone for most of the track before her voice sneaks off into the distance, disappearing in a puff of reverb smoke as heavily effected sounds rise up to fill the space – reversed vocals, samples and studio trickery creating an unusual and luscious crescendo that builds to an abrupt stop.

The title song 'Divers' is painfully beautiful, sad, thoughtful and full of loss. There's an almost Far-Eastern feel to the complex harp arpeggios and chords that sing on top of the piano, which carries the song along. It is full of space but once again defies expectation, most song-writers would leave that opening section alone and repeat it, for fear of breaking up the intimacy with complexity, but Joanna Newsom thrives in this arena. Those unexpected blue notes in the following section really make the song and you have to respect her ability to take the listener on a journey rather than lock them in a mood. 'Same Old Man' follows sounding like some old prairie song with it's softly plucked banjo, lilting melody and sweet harmony. Somewhere in amongst the classic sounds of the Americana songbook I'm sure I can make out a low analogue synth rumbling. 'You Will Not Take My Heart Alive' puts the focus on the harp and vocal, which actually sounds a little too much like it could be the backing track to some online fantasy Role Playing Game to me, but the titular refrain, where the music strips down and she repeates that phrase with powerful emotion, manages to rescue things a little, although I'd say this is probably my least favourite track on the record.

 
'A Pin-Light Bent' was the first song of Newsom's encore at the recent Dome set, performed solo, and it is an amazing piece. The harp really comes to life on this one, one moody motif repeats throughout while plucked chords ascend expressively on top and, on this recording, a few soft piano chords provide a floor. The album closes with 'Time, As A Symptom' whose refrain of, "the nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating joy of life" is perhaps the most chorus-like moment on the album. It's a hook! And it's glorious when this track builds from it's early steps as just piano and vocal (weirdly accompanied by what sounds like a hooting owl), to a dense orchestral arrangement propelled by the drums of Joanna's brother Pete and some amazing horns which remind me of some of my favourite moments in Sigur Ros's earlier output. My only criticism would be that, even at five and a half minutes, it feels like it could go on for longer. But then I am told, by those who know her work better than I, that this is a feature of her fourth record – the song structures are shorter and so, perhaps, this is a very good place to start for the uninitiated.
 
Her lyrics are fascinating and that voice, while it may be a little challenging at first to ears untuned to it, really has the power to move you emotionally. The harp is such a complex and beautiful instrument it's wonderful that an artist like Newsom is out there, exploring the possibilities it holds and bringing them to our attention. She is one of those rare complete artists; producing, writing and performing most of the music you hear on Divers and taking us to places few would dare musically or lyrically – but really it is the familiar sounds of American folk and Blues that came as the biggest surprise to me. They permeate the album in wonderful ways, grounding it to a friendly place when I was fearing I could get lost in some sort of neo-classical density. Divers is a wonderful album that I imagine I will return to often for those dark nights of introspection as we fall into the winter months. If you haven't tried listening to her yet I would say Joanna Newsom is worth the time invested in discovery.
Adam Kidd

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