newsom

back when i was writing reviews i got sent a copy of joanna newson's 'the milk eyed mender'. i didn't get very far with it, and tossed it into the box of cds to go to the charity shop (known in the office as 'the box of shame'. eventually a colleague discovered it; he was already apparently a big fan and was rather disappointed in my inabilty to appreciate her genius.

it wasn't that i thought she wasn't a genius but that i just couldn't get past my immediate dislike of her voice. i thought i had a high tolerance of peculiar singers whose voices could be described as an acquired taste, but i wasn't too bothered about acquiring a taste for this one.

when 'ys' came out featuring arrangements by van dyke parks etc i tried again and met with a similar level of success. by this time it had become clear that ms newsom was doing something that was probably really good and was certainly not much like anything else that was going on and that a lot of people really liked it. but i just didn't get it.

so the announcement of the release of the three cd 'have one on me' didn't really register with me as a potentially gripping event in my rich cultural lifestyle. ahem. but then i read a review that mentioned how her voice had changed as a result of a medical condition; joni mitchell was mentioned. and kate bush, this was somehow just enough to pique my interest again so i ended up listening (in a distracted way) to NPR's stream of the entire album. after three songs i'd ordered it.

i can honestly say i've not been so in love with a record for some years. and so far i've only listened to disc one. i like it so much that i don't really want to write about it and anyway there's enough people out there doing that already, and far better than i could. i think i'll end up checking out the earlier ones again at some point and maybe i'll end up completely revising my opinion of them. but i'm not in any hurry just yet.



the only problem i have with the album is the series of photos of ms winsom poncing around in her underwear (see above) which look like the kind of things you'd see framed on the walls of a gents hairdresser in the 1980s. it doesn't quite sit right with what i hear, somehow...