Posted: Sunday 27th July 2008

Reviewed by Samantha McGowan and Andrew Jones

On a sprightly summer’s evening, just as dusk is beckoning, Somerset House plays host to Joanna Newsom’s only UK gig this year, before a sold out crowd.

With no need for such trifling details as a backing band, Joanna Newsom is perhaps one of the few truly ‘solo’ artists operating at the forefront of music today. As the crowd saunter into Somerset House’s huge courtyard this evening they are met by a stage populated by nothing more than an (admittedly elaborate) grand piano and, at centre stage her harp, which towers in silent promise of the delights that an evening’s music from this highly acclaimed artist must surely hold in store.

Dressed in a flowing evening gown, the vibrant pink and green colours of which immediately capture the eye of an expectant crowd, Joanna Newsom is an arresting and quietly charismatic presence as she takes the stage seated next to her harp. In person, her sense of style and faultless charm perfectly compliment the personality of her elegant, crafted music, as she first greets the crowd and then seamlessly begins to pluck away at the opening notes of the beautiful ‘Bridges & Balloons’.

Taking the stage at 9pm, this first track is momentarily disturbed by the chiming of the courtyard’s clock tower, reminding the audience that perhaps Somerset House was not originally designed with this kind of musical event in mind (there would be other reminders through the evening…) but in any case the distraction is soon over and the ears and eyes of the audience are able to focus solely on the music (at least until the next hour when of course the clock struck again).

Whilst the lush intricacies of her harp playing are undeniably present this evening, this opening number suffers from her desire to improvise vocally as she strays away from the piece as it is originally recorded on her debut album The Milk Eyed Mender to a less familiar, slightly off-kilter reading of the song. The second song ‘Emily’ is far more successful and in its stripped down live form, unadorned by the string arrangements of its studio version, it possesses an intimacy that is perhaps preferable to the over-egged orchestral pretensions of the album from which it hails Ys. The song, a heartfelt, playful paean to her astrophysicist sister, is one of the finest moments of her career so far and the undoubted highlight of the evening.

As the evening progresses so does the erratic nature of the set. The audience are one minute wowed, the next wrong-footed, and ultimately this proves a little frustrating. When after performing the opening clutch of songs on the harp, Newsom moves mid-show to perform sat at the grand piano on the far left of the stage, the show undoubtedly loses a little of its momentum, particularly as Newsom uses this section of the set to audition her new (and as yet unreleased) material, some of which comes over a little lacklustre in this environment. This section of the evening also highlights a lingering feeling that harp-less, Newsom loses a little of her individuality, and when she eventually returns to the ubiquitous instrument later on (and the more familiar material of her two acclaimed albums), the atmosphere heightens immediately.

Overall the evening is enjoyable enough though, without being a resounding success. Although the grandeur of the surroundings within Somerset House are easily sufficient to impress both the crowd and performer alike, (‘‘This is crazy!’’ remarks Newsom after finishing her opening number) it is perhaps less than practical to stand for several hours on such a hard, cobbled stone floor (ouch…). In addition to this drop in temperature after 10pm left our performer woefully underdressed for the weather in her aforementioned strapless dress, as the crowd scrambled to offer her their cardigans and coats which she politely declined before soldiering on through the last few songs.

Perhaps it was the cold that meant there was no encore, but after the conclusion of the concert, the omission of popular tracks like The Book of Right On and The Sprout & The Bean in favour of the newer, previously unheard tracks that made up a sizeable slice of the night ultimately made the concert less satisfying than one may have anticipated. Perhaps Joanna Newsom is tiring of performing these older tracks now, and this indeed seemed to be the case with those that she did play, in which the melodies were occasionally altered and chords and phrasings improvised, distractingly so in some places.

The impression left by the evening was that, perhaps commendably, a talent as ferociously creative as Joanna Newsom’s is one that is constantly searching and driving forward, rather than given to resting on its past glories. That she is excited to perform her new material is in little doubt, but it may take a little more time, and perhaps a new release that packages these songs for her fans to better digest, before they can fully take the place of the more familiar terrain on which she has built her formidable reputation.