Song 58: In California

In California - Joanna Newsom
News just in that Joanna Newsom is engaged to her long term boyfriend Andy Samberg. Andy Samberg has also done quite a few songs I've enjoyed enormously. Here are a couple of them.

Jack Sparrow

Dick in a Box

So, a somewhat different style from his paramour, but not without merit. If you're a fan of the show 'Girls' you'll have noticed that another member of Samberg's comedy singing troupe The Lonely Island plays the tremendously named Booth Jonathan in the show.

All that being so, it's quite possible that Samberg (who also starred in the quite amusing BBC3 sitcom 'Cuckoo' with Greg Davies) is part of the inspiration for this song, because although an awful lot of Joanna Newsom's songs are story songs without much of a hint of autiobiography, this monumentally beautiful song has a tinge of truth about it.

Monumentally, you say? That's a big word. But yes, this song is a monument to the concept of beauty in music, and yes I have taken into account the fact that Joanna Newsom has a funny, squeaky voice.

That was also a hindrance to my enjoyment of her work for some time. I did not get the first album, and was having none of it - "Svetlana sucks lemons", this sucks ass, i thought.

But a couple of very positive reviews of her second album 'Ys' (which also said that her voice had got less squeaky, which was somewhat true) and then a freebie CD which contained 'Cosmia', persuaded me to purchase it, and I was partly converted. Even more so when I saw her live at ATP - that same festival where I saw Nick Cave walking along staring at the birds, I saw Newsom a couple of times, and thought it really quite mesmerically tremendous. I mean, the harp is a cool instrument.

'Ys' is really a fine, fine album, orchestrated by Van Dyke Parks, with the most fabulous arrangements on just the five long, long songs. You can tell that every word, every syllable has been pored over - it's rich and magical and really unlike anything you've heard before. My favourite song from that album is Emily but all five are little masterpieces in their own right.

Whether you prefer 'Ys' to its follow-up 'Have One on Me' is a question of what you're after. 'Have One On Me' is enormous - 18 tracks to Ys's 5, looser, less ornate, more varied, still with a few monster magna opera, but with a few more that could almost be considered pop songs.

I prefer 'Have One On Me'. Indeed, I went through a good year or two preferring Have One On Me to everything else there had ever been in music. Rather like Jacques Kallis has done in cricket in recent years, I felt 'Have One on Me' built up an indisputable weight of evidence for being considered the greatest album of all time. I really feel it's at a level of ambition and artistry which popular music has not seen before. And why do I prefer it to 'Ys'? Well, it's got soul. It sounds not like a precocious genius at the height of her inventive talent (like Ys), but like a genius at the height of her inventive talent who's lived a little, and wants to show it.

And 'In California' is the height of that. iTunes records that I have listened to it 101 times all the way through, which, considering it is 8 minutes and 44 seconds long, is a fair bit of time devoted to one song (especially since most of those listens were probably in a six-month period).

And yet I'm still not that much nearer the heart of it. I'm not a musician or a songwriter but, let's be honest, most songs aren't that difficult to understand how they've come about, even fabulous songs, even initially complex songs. Chords, tunes, words, piecing bits together, playing together, this and that, I kind of get it.

But I can't conceive of how Joanna Newsom came up with 'In California', where she started, whether she had the overall structure first, or whether there were a few lines here and there - it seems like an immense mystery. It actually gives me a little idea of why some people prefer classical music (though I'll always be a pop music man) - to have something which you know you'll forever be hearing new things in, which you'll never tire of. That's 'In California' for me.

It is possible to compare Joanna Newsom to Joni Mitchell, though they don't necessarily sound all that much alike, and one imagines Mitchell's best songs will always appeal more immediately (and she is, obviously, a much better singer), and this song, almost alone among Newsom songs, has the intimacy and rawness of the songs on 'Blue'.
Of course, one of the great songs on 'Blue' is 'California' so those are two very nice songs to listen to back to back. Searching for something to say about that has led me to this rather tremendous pitchfork review, which makes a lot of the points I've been trying to make about 'Have One On Me' but rather better. But so be it, I provided you with a link to 'Dick in a Box', so i win.