Joanna Newsom’s “Have One On Me”: Sprawling, Unwieldy Beauty

Joanna Newsom’s third album, “Have One On Me,” runs against every trend in contemporary culture. It’s a work that flaunts its anachronism—musically, lyrically, temporally. It’s music that demands not just to be heard, but to be paid attention to, music that reveals something different upon every encounter—music that’s meant to endure.

As is the case with Newsom’s previous work, the songs on “Have One On Me” require the listener’s effort—effort to decipher her often coded metaphors, to follow her voice as it ascends into ever higher registers, to keep pace with her changing time signatures and keys. But Newsom has always rewarded such exertions. And she does so again here. “Have One On Me” is as deeply personal as her previous album, 2006’s “Ys,” providing the generosity of Newsom’s reflections on love, kindness and the possibility of meaningful human connection to those who take the time to appreciate the record’s complexity. Her songs may meander, but they do so with purpose. Newsom’s leading us—however indirectly—to places we need to be led.

The three-CD release contains 18 songs that run for over two hours, a veritable epic compared to Top 40 radio’s formulaic pop. Her record forces us to slow down. “Have One On Me,” like “Ys,” is an argument against the disposable nature of today’s culture. But fortunately, “Have One On Me” isn’t overly abstract, art that’s meant to be put in a glass case and only observed from afar. Newsom’s music reaches into the soul of anyone who allows her entry.

While the lyrics on “Have On One Me” are as intricately crafted as those on “Ys,” they’re definitely more accessible. Newsom explores love with a fearlessness uncommon to artists in any medium. The album ends with the stunning, “Does Not Suffice”—a song about a failed relationship that once had so much potential. The song’s sparseness, with its subdued, jazz piano rifts, contrasts with Newsom’s rich, somber vocals, allowing the listener to raptly absorb her words. “The tap of hangers / swaying in the closet— / unburdened hooks / and empty drawers— / and everywhere I tried to love you / is yours again, / and only yours,” she sings, less a lament, than an unavoidable reality finally grasped. Newsom is tracing not just a breakup, but all the spaces turned hollow after love’s departure.

Newsom has a novelist’s gift for rendering entire lifetimes in a few simple sentences. Yet despite her literary abilities, “Have One On Me” returns again to a common Newsom theme: the limits of language to ever adequately describe our emotions and experience. On “Esme,” Newsome sings, “This is a world of terrible hardship / everywhere / and I search for words / to set you at ease / But there, in the looking glass, / a kite is soaring, / stilling my warring heart / and my trembling knees.” Even as she writes it, Newsom knows that her poetry is poor consolation for humanity’s suffering.

Newsom is often accused of being difficult and pretentious. Such claims miss the point of her music entirely. Newsom’s skill at making the harp a relevant contemporary instrument is as commendable as it is awe-inspiring. And while Newsom may wrap her confessions in poetry and metaphor, a la Vladimir Nabokov (whom she much admires), this is less a sign of vanity than an aversion to didacticism. It’s not for her to tell us how to feel. She wants each of us to experience her music in our own way. With “Have One On Me,” we realize yet again how lucky we are to have that privilege.