It may be a stretch to call Joanna Newsom’s third album her down-to-earth pop record. "Have One On Me" does, after all, extend across three CDs of generally very long songs, features a harp duelling with a kora, and a dream sequence in which the singer arrives before her lover “on a palanquin made of the many bodies of beautiful women.” On the back of an elephant.
A bumper list this week, as the 2009 releases start arriving in the Uncut office. Not everything here is going down ecstatically, but a first listen to the new Fennesz album today suggests that one was well worth waiting for. In the continuing absence of those My Bloody Valentine reissues, let alone any unreleased material from Kevin Shields’ archives, “Black Sea” really deserves to bring Christian Fennesz to a wider audience, I think.
From a British music biz perspective, it’s hard to imagine anything else going on this week beyond the small matter of that Coldplay record. This morning, though, a sobering corrective arrived in my inbox. In America, the email announced, “Lil Wayne has broken Mariah Carey’s record for the highest opening album sales of the year. He has sold in one day what Mariah sold in her entire week.” That’s 420,000 sales, incidentally; something for Chris Martin, Guy Hands and their competitive chums to aim for, I guess.
Joan Wasser has, for a long time, been in the periphery of my vision: I remember catching The Dambuilders by chance at CBGB’s on a bill with Teenage Fanclub and Madder Rose; a presence with violin in both The Johnsons and in Rufus Wainwright’s band; a member of Dave Shouse’s excellent post-Grifters project, Those Bastard Souls.
