Down Where We Darn with the Milk-Eyed Mender

Joanna Newsom---child-voiced chanteuse/classically trained harpist/hyperliterate woodland nymph---took the stage at the Showbox last night looking just as we expected: with long, flowing hair and donning a red garment more nightgown than dress. Climbing behind her harp, she was totally Holly Hobbie at the renaissance faire. She kicked off her set solo by launching into "Bridges and Balloons" and "The Book of Right-On," both off her first album, before playing a traditional Scottish tune. Cradling the harp against her body, she delicately caressed, plucked, palmed, and stroked the strings, each technique creating a distinctly different tone.

From there, she was joined by a quintet with guitars, banjo, a Bulgarian tambura (like a lute), drums, accordion, saw, and jaw harp to create a relatively stripped-down arrangement, compared to the new album's complex orchestration care of living legend Van Dyke Parks. With the quintet in hand, Joanna proceeded to run through Ys song by song. Yes, there's only five songs on the album, but that's still an hour of music, man. Given the acoustic instrumentation, this was the first show we've been to in a long time that didn't require the use of earplugs. The sound was much more intimate than on the album, which occasionally threatens to gild the lily a mite too much.

There was a slight sound issue, in that the bass drum was far too heavy in the mix, and so on the few occasions when it was really pounding (the galloping conclusion of "Emily," the last third of twisted fable "Monkey & Bear" [mp3]), it nearly overwhelmed all the other instrumentation and vocals. For "Sawdust and Diamonds" [mp3] (our favorite track off the new album), Joanna performed solo, with a couple perfectly executed voice cracks and her band as well as the audience at rapt attention following her expressive movements. On album closer "Cosmia" the accordion player broke out the saw, which he bowed to ghostly effect. After thunderous applause, Joanna returned to perform a solo encore of three more Milk-Eyed Mender crowd favorites: "Sadie" (about her dog), "Peach, Plum, Pear" (about a guy), and "Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie" (about god knows what).

As to that voice: it's certainly matured between her first album and now. Joanna has learned how to use her squeaks and chirps more as an instrument than a borderline annoying gimmick, and she's toned down the childishness big time. You can hear that on the old tunes she's been performing on this tour, but it's nowhere more evident than on new track "Only Skin" [mp3], especially the live version of the nearly seventeen-minute song. She takes on a deep whisper for the lines about a gun, and in a song where she sings that she's the "happiest woman among all the women," for once she actually sounds like a full-fledged adult. For this song only, she drops the act completely to reveal the woman behind the voice of a child. Only twenty-four years old and a remarkable virtuoso, our little girl's all growns up.

Photo care of Flickr / user successless.