Introducing...

(Morning Star, Saturday 21 May 2005)

IN PROFILE: Joanna Newsom

IN today's post-pop, post-punk, post-postal musical climate, a harpist hailing from Nevada City, California, is an anomaly indeed.

Joanna Newsom now lives in San Francisco and has her fingers in a number of musical pies.

As well as playing with San Francisco rock trio Nervous Cop, Joanna plays keyboards for The Pleased, a band who owe more to Blondie and Television than traditional harp music.

But Newsom's nothing if not inventive and she stresses that her music is informed by many influences.

Writing on her own for about eight years, Newsom's avant-garde leanings are obvious.

Although she takes her lead from folk music, her study of African harp affords her the ability to make sounds with an instrument that most people have never heard before.

Having said that, Newsom is consciously trying to make what she terms "American" music, not wanting to be tarred with the world music brush.

Opening for Devendra Banhart in 2003 got her noticed and the buzz only grew from there.

"I guess that the news travels fast," Newsom humbly states when asked about her fame.

Now in her early twenties, she's been playing harp for about 16 years - and the recognition she receives shows that being from a family of musicians can pay off.

Her mother aimed to be a concert pianist and gave it up to become a doctor, but who still plays piano and "all sorts of stuff." Her father plays guitar, her sister's a cellist and her brother plays drums - von Trapp family eat your heart out.

Newsom's most recent album The Milk Eyed Mender (Drag City) is packed with ethereal beauty and offbeat humour, like magical opener Bridges and Balloons or the wonderful This Side Of The Blue, which features the most striking opening line this decade: "Svetlana sucks lemons across from me, and I am progressing abominably."

It's a lovely, gently subversive work from one of the most promising new musicians from the US.