We Meet At the Store, I’m a Sensitive Bore

Last night we went to see Joanna Newsome at the Sydney Opera House. She was performing her recent(ish) album ‘Ys’ with the Sydney Symphony orchestra, and some older songs from ‘Milk Eyed Mender’ and two songs from the ‘Joanna Newsome and the Ys Street Band’ EP.

 

The whole thing was amazing. She was brilliant. I’d never really twigged what a great harpist she is, and just how she veers away from conventional harp playing. I also think her voice has really matured recently and you can detect what I think is the Appalachian folk roots of her songs. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra were really good too, and as you can imagine, seeing this in the Opera House was quite an experience. The acoustics are stunning and the concert hall actually feels rather cathedral and epic. What’s more the Korean girls sitting in front of us were wearing some kind of frangipani scent, so I even have some pleasant olfactory memories to take away too!

One thing that I did notice though: the performance was split into two halves – the Ys album first, the stuff without SSO second – and in the second half, there were lots of empty seats. The reason is simple. Sydney is awash with tourists and loads of people who go to performances at the Opera House just get whatever tickets are going so they can say they’ve seen something there. Lots of those who left at the interval had obviously never heard of Joanna Newsome and probably couldn’t stand a second half. And in case you’ve never heard of Joanna Newsome either, her music tends to polarise opinions.

Depending on where your opinion falls, her voice is either unique or f*cking aggravating, her lyrics are either dense and poetic or pretentious nursery rhymes, and her songs are either structurally unconventional and avante-garde, or atonal anti-melodic dog shit. If you’re a baby boomer in your sixties doing a P&O world cruise and for your Opera House outing you get tickets to see some women – who you assume is to the harp what Yoyo Ma is to the Cello – playing with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and what you get is Joanna Newsome, I imagine you’re only two minutes into “Monkey and Bear” before you think you should have stumped up the extra $75 for La Boheme.

Anyway, I absolutely loved it!