White Star, White Ship, Nightjar, Transmit: Transcend!
A damp morning with Joanna Newsom and other peculiarities from OneTrackMinds HQ.
Hello Friends!
A prescription for a damp morning. It’s another less-than-inspiring morning in London (although, now that I’m writing this, the sun has, at last, peeked out from behind the thick bruise of cloud, taking some of the edge off the bleakness). If like me, you woke up feeling a little less-than-inspired as a result, let me share with you a little remedy for said bleakness which I chanced upon by accident.
Here’s what you need to do: steal an hour from your schedule, take yourself somewhere where you can sit quietly with your eyes closed without anyone judging you, or threatening to have you fired, and break out your best pair of headphones.
(Actually, you don’t even need a full hour. And you don’t really need your best pair of headphones, although both elements are recommended if you want to feel the full effect of the magic.)
Next, go to your music streaming service of choice, (or follow this link), and prepare yourself for 52 minutes of utterly bewitching beauty, as you listen to the entirety of Joanna Newsom’s sublime 2015 album Divers…
I don’t know why I decided to put it on this morning. I haven’t listened to it in absolutely ages - probably since it first came out, seven years ago. It was released around this time of the year though, so perhaps there was something in the air, in the colour of the light, the yellow of the trees, as I walked my girls to school this morning, that reminded me of listening to it. That maybe reminded me of some of the comfort it can offer.
If you’ve never heard of Joanna Newsom, and this morning’s prescription is your first experience with her, a quick warning: she’s… how to put this?… quite peculiar. Her voice is often described as ‘witchy’, which is neither particularly kind, nor particularly accurate. Her voice is certainly unusual. Although, if you’re a fan of Kate Bush or Joni Mitchell, you’ll surely hear something familiar in the way she sings.
What’s also unusual is her instrumentation. On her earlier albums, she predominantly accompanied her voice with a harp, which is not an instrument that gets a lot of airtime these days. By the time she recorded Divers - her fourth, and most recent, album - the harp has taken a back seat. It’s still very much there (you can’t get rid of a harp all that easily, and I suppose if you’ve bought one, you might as well use it), but on this record she shares the stage with a lot more instruments (on some songs, as many as eight, played by musicians including Nico Muhly and Dave Longstreth from The Dirty Projectors). And what really makes Divers such a lush and lovely record to listen to - and why, if you can break out your best headphones, you’ll really reap the benefit - is the incredible depth of sound that the arrangement achieves.
She’s an amazing storyteller too. Many of the songs on Divers are long, winding narratives, set within richly painted worlds, that feel long-established, lived-in, familiar, yet unquestionably weird, strange, unsettling, like the settings of fairy tales (which may explain the slightly lazy ‘witchy’ description of her music). Her lyrics are full of internal rhymes, wordplay and other such clevernesses that catch in your ear and cause you to smile.
As I say, the whole album is only eleven songs, and 52 minutes long. If you can steal that short hour from your workday, I promise you it will be worth it, if only so you can experience the context in which to best experience the glorious conclusion of the final track Time, As A Symptom, with its repeated chorus, which speaks of:
The nullifying, defeating, negating, repeating joy of life…
… and the awe-inspiring final lines…
Again, around, a pause, a sound, a song,
a way a lone a last a loved a long, a cave, a grave, a day: arise, ascend
Areion, Rharian, go free and graze
Amen
A shore, a tide, unmoored - a sight, abroad
A dawn, unmarked, undone, undarked (a god)
No time, no flock, no chime, no clock, no end
White star, white ship - Nightjar, transmit:
Transcend!
… which - and I’m not afraid to admit this - made me cry a little bit… And not just because I can’t honestly say I know what it’s supposed to mean.
If you can’t carve out 52 minutes from your day (and, look, totally no judgment!), then may I suggest you try a taster in the form of the title track:
Anyway. Your mileage might vary. You might find it all a bit much. Maybe a bit too ‘witchy’. And that’s fair enough. But if you’ve been feeling a little fed up, I hope Joanna Newsom can bring something awe-inspiring to your otherwise drab day.
Don't forget your tickets to next week’s shows at Wilton’s Music Hall. We’re on both Friday and Saturday nights (24th and 25th November), and as these are our last shows of the year, we’re going out in style, with some amazing storytellers including poet Salena Godden, author Amy Key, actor and screenwriter Vanessa Hehir and rapper and author Guvna B. There’s a minor personnel change in the works - we’ve sadly lost Yassmin Abdel-Magied to her overly busy schedule, but we’ll confirm her replacement as soon as we can. But you know already that it doesn’t matter who we have on the show - you’re guaranteed a great night of music and storytelling, a massive boost of oxytocin, a metaphorical hug from an old friend, and an evening that will live in your memory for a long time afterwards. Please come along, and bring all of your friends. Tickets here.
Some alumni news before we go:
There’s a new reality TV show based on Korean Netflix sensation Squid Game, and our intrepid friend Rhik Samadder had a go at some of the games.
If you know me and Adam at all, you’ll know we’re a pair of dickheads when it comes to tea. We spend too much time thinking about it, too much time worrying about it, and probably (if you ask our wives) far too much money buying it. Which is why we were very excited by this piece in The Guardian from OneTrackMinds storyteller Luke Turner on his campaign for cups of tea in public institutions to cost no more than £1. Hear hear!!!
Last week’s Charity Show headliner Katie Melua was interviewed in Saturday’s Guardian Magazine.
Right, that’ll do! Thanks for reading and for bearing with me. It’s a lot, I know. We’ll see you next week. Stay happy until then.
KB.