Joanna Newsom is a classy lady! In 1966, Bob Dylan sang of a woman named Louise holding “a handful of rain, temptin’ you to defy it” in “Visions of Johanna;” journals have published multi-page, analytic essays of the song whereupon the authors of these close readings arrive at saying things like “Louise represents the earthly (…); Johanna represents the pure” and this is all very boring. It’s evocative of education without character.
On her third collection, an apropos triple album, Ms. Newsom can be seen as tipping her hat to Dylan in the fourth stanza of “Jackrabbits” when she offers several lines which wonderfully explain the pleasant albeit cryptic lyric from 44 years ago.
“You can take my hand / In the darkness, darlin,” she offers while affirming “And it can change in shape, or form / But never change in size,” concluding “The water, it runs deep, my darlin, / Where it don’t run wide.”
Isn’t this nice!
Both songwriters play with the notions of hands and water, though Joanna has the courtesy to not leave them blowin’ in the wind—
As we learned in third grade, water carries an objective size despite lacking shape, but now, years later, we have found Mrs. Crabapple omitted the second half of this lesson, and we have perhaps been living our lives under the assumption of our hands carrying the objectivity of their size into shape, as solids are required to do. And we have been wrong.
Whereas Dylan regards rain and Louise’s hand as separate, Newsom breaks from this tradition to show the obvious.
As silhouettes demonstrated before we could so-little-as read, a hand always remains as such, but has the potential to take the forms of eagles, kittens, and very lazy turtles; it can evoke compassion when displaying its palm and quite the opposite once turned about.
As her words illustrate, one’s hand is just as elegant as that which composes any snow flake or drop of rain.
Bestowing this information to children would undoubtedly create a paradigm shift the status quo finds upsetting; curriculums may be abbreviated, but folksingers can not be stopped.
Her debut album, 2004’s Milk-Eyed Mender, left many critics placing her into the avant-garde in lieu of her harp and inimitable voice despite her assertions to the contrary. “This is an old song, these are old blues,” she sang on “Sadie” before admitting “This is not my tune, but it’s mine to use.”
With these two lines, Newsom clung to the traditions which preceded her but, like Dylan and his deviation into electricity, expropriated them to make them breathe.
In his post-Newport 1966, Dylan claimed “Folk music is a bunch of fat people” which was to say it had become conservative to the point of rejecting innovation, though Newsom wasn’t so much innovating as she was merely looking at it through a different lens.
Her latest effort is a continuation of such a view, but not so much in terms of it bearing refinement so much as understanding. Just as she synthesized hands with water, she also does so with the essayist’s interpretation of the opposition of Louise and Johanna: in her, we find an artist of pure intent even if it took her the spans of three LPs to express it.
Her perfection is flawed and, because of this, Joanna Newsom is an artist of rare quality. This isn’t an album for a wide audience, but spending an afternoon with it might make you a better person.
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