Album review: Joanna Newsom, ‘Divers’

Newsom’s working with a darker palette of colours here, and in all respects – her ideas, musicianship and vocals – is evidently a master.

It is, we think, the first time she’ll be back in the country since she came out for WOMADelaide in 2011 while we were undergoing that once in a half-century cricket plague.

Joanna Newsom will perform at the Orpheum Theatre on December. 6. Both Ys. and 2010’s two-hour-plus, triple album Have One on Me are regarded as two of the most brilliant indie records of the last decade, in a few part, by virtue of being so overwhelming.

The record never loses its sonic clarity – Steve Albini and Noah Georgeson take a bow- even as Newsom’s crisp harp, regal piano and often multi-tracked voice is enveloped by a well-cast collection of bouzoukis, English horns, too many keyboards to name, the City of Prague Symphonic Orchestra and even a Hohner Guitaret, a kalimba in a box. “Sapokanikan” is just further proof of Newsom’s songwriting capabilities. The album is shorter than normal for Newsom, but she’s maintained her labyrinthine lyrics.

Devotees of Joanna Newsom are used to the harpist’s baroque, sprawling albums: her masterpiece Have One on Me runs to three CDs. But Newsom builds songs like cathedrals of sound, layers of voices, instruments and words reaching you from every direction. These songs are constantly at odds with themselves: They push and pull between disarming, even smooth (“Divers”) pop crooning and abrasive pealing reminiscent of her early work, or full rock arrangements (“Leaving the City” and Longstreth-arranged closer “Time, As a Symptom”) and woodwind-driven chamber music (“Anecdotes”).