Joanna Newsom Live

When a set of music has been literally orchestrated, as a symphony or, in the case of Joanna Newsom's new album, a veritable concerto--five tracks, supported by strings, ranging in length from 7 to 16 minutes--the pleasure in hearing it performed live is not really related to sound so much as meaning. Even for those of us most interested in sounds--the sound of music, the sound of word--sight will trump. As we find ourselves yards back from the stage fixated intently on the performer, we'll be transformed as fans. And it's not the eighteen dollar double shot of whiskey; it's that face hammering home hundreds of words.

Joanna Newsom is petite and pale with wavy, dirty blond hair that cascades down her back. She's Californian, but is more convincing as a Hardy heroine, with a girlish figure, a makeup-free, nearly unkempt face, and an expression of modest bewilderment also known as intense concentration. Watching her at Webster Hall, it was easy to see she's a classical musician at heart: a hardworking and subdued individual with a great talent, both with words and music, that allows her to eloquently unharness emotion and passion. Her new album is, as many have said, a masterpiece, intimidating and embracing, and something that must be embraced even (especially) by the most diehard haters of women, of female musicians other than Patti Smith, or of The Milk-Eyed Mender, her two-year-old debut.

At Webster Hall, Newsom played each track of Ys in order and employed guitars, banjos, and a backup vocalist as her replacement Van Dyke Parks. This of course adds to the intimacy: Ys becomes less a concerto and more just another unplugged folk performance. But it's not fucking folk. And it's not 'just another' anything. It's unclassifiable and stunning.

What you notice in your drunken transfixion is a) that the orchestra's soul is still there, just missing a half dozen strings and their guts: the guitar family is minimalist and reserved, following along behind Newsom's melodies like timid animals; and b) that the context of these songs begs understanding. The live performance is only further enlightenment of their pretty much unknowable meaning. My guess is: family life gone astray, romances destroyed by loss, and a life lived in ornate and peaceful landscapes, removed from cities and the boring, overcooked energy with which music about cities can be composed.

Hence Thomas Hardy. Newsom is not so much a fan of metaphors but, as Hardy was, the intense relationship between nature and the mind; the psychological connection between a person and his/her landscape. This is not an oeuvre of comparisons so much as literal, concrete interactions: Newsom's father explaining meteors; her affectionate observations of flora and fauna. (Though of course the metaphors are valuable, too.) Ys is an example of how nature transforms and helps our understanding of inward problems with which nature might have little to do. The album is richly visual, and in a live performance Newsom's lyrics are louder, are more substantive. It's the same effect as being taught something in a classroom, if only one were drunk and standing in a sweaty crowd in a classroom. At a Newsom show, you're listless, adoring, attentive. There are glimmers of meaning you didn't hear before. You finally get this or that. And every subsequent listen of the album will yield more meaning.

This is why live shows exist. Not only to give the artist a little money and watch her face glow with stunned surprise at the vastness of her happy audience, but to examine the work in another light, which, by the bye, was red and blue, bright and sharp, focused directly over Newsom's immaculate pallor, angel hair, and the majestic instruments of lady and harp.