Joanna Newsom's Loose Limbs

In interviews, Joanna Newsom seems refreshingly down-to-earth (not normally a trait I admire, as it happens but perhaps more essential for her music than it is for her) but it's the choice of photos that is more revealing. The photo above is the exemplar, I think: a mix of sex and angularity; an awkwardness of poise that was certainly absent from the photos in the CD booklet of Have One On Me, which for a moment turned her into an indiescent nymph, an artfully splayed Balthus chick, a woman of these times...





Contrast the Medievalism of Ys...



the folk innocence of The Milk Eyed Mender...



And there's something else that appears when you start looking at the album covers - she really is emerging. Almost hidden in the mix of symbols on the front of The Milk Eyed Mender* then turned into an actual artform on Ys (perhaps as a response to those who couldn't let the music do the talking - we loved her music yes, but we loved her more and this perhaps made her rightfully uncomfortable) and then onto Have One On Me, where there's a kind of 'ah fuck it' shrug and a dash towards sex, albeit still through a slightly otherworldy, 1920s Anais Nin erotica gauze...

*even in the publicity photos she's hidden slightly, or hiding...



But back to what I wanted to say, which is maybe lost now and that's related to the first picture; the way those arms are slightly misaligned, slightly Masonic, oddness paired with sweetness - Out Of The Strong, Came Forth Sweetness - which in turn is paired with an oddly jarring homeliness... crochet sex, homespun drop-necks, a sex position with the addition of some vague time-keeping (is she looking at an invisible watch while we're, you know, while we're... Oh God. Why can't I see that watch? Why is she time-keeping now...?)

Joanna Newsom playing with the latent (fuck it, manifest) male horror of timeliness and sex (too soon, too late, too much)? It's obvious isn't it? I mean, if we're not supposed to take this from that photo, then what are we supposed to take?

Is this just me?

Oh.

Fuck.

Back to the football, I think.

For what it's worth Have One On Me is mostly excellent I think. I'm keeping with it. I like the tales she's spinning. It's a grower, definitely. It's a sing-a-long.