Use the word "dirigible" in a song.

Last Friday the Notorious D.R.J.U. was in town from Seattle and invited me to go to a show with his good friends A & K. I don't know A & K that well but I really like them. They are one of those couples that you can't imagine not being together, yet they are each also really cool as individual people. They have two young munchkins and a bun in the oven. They were so pleased to be out for a night on the town sans children that they gleefully called out their favorite profanities as we walked from my place to the show.

We saw Joanna Newsom at the Rio Theatre with Bill Callahan aka SMOG opening. Some musicians make me feel like maybe I'm just not smart enough or cool enough to get their music. Unfortunately, Bill Callahan did that for me. I recognize that I have JoJo on my Celebrity iTunes Playlist, though, so I'm at peace with my musical senses having been dulled by years of listening to over-produced pop music. It was all a little too intense and introspective for me. Callahan sang one song that repeated the word "sycamore," but it he sang it in such a way that it sounded like "Sycamo...ore...whore... whore..." I was relieved when someone a few rows away got the the giggles.

Joanna Newsom was another story. When I first heard "harpist" I thought, "Check, please." but I was delighted to find I was wrong, wrong, wrong. Joanna Newsom is a straight-up trip. Her voice has been described as "child-like" and the Notorious D.R.J.U. turned to me at one point and said "Is she twelve?" but he didn't mean it as an insult. She has a voice that is light and airy but powerful. Her band with her that played instruments like the glockenspiel and an actual saw. Have you ever seen someone play a saw? Let me tell you, it is quite cool. Eclectic does not begin to describe the band or the music. It's kind of a folky alternative grassblues. I think. She seemed to really enjoy herself and was totally comfortable on stage. The lyrics are... well, take this example, the song "Bridges and Balloons":

We sailed away on a winter's day
with fate as malleable as clay;
but ships are fallible, I say,
and the nautical, like all things, fades

And I can recall our caravel:
a little wicker beetle shell
with four fine maste and lateen sails,
its bearings on Cair Paravel

O my love,
O it was a funny little thing
to be the ones to've seen.

The sight of bridges and balloons
makes calm canaries irritable;
they caw and claw all afternoon:
"Catenaries and dirigibles
brace and buoy the living-room --
a loom of metal, warp - woof - wimble."
And a thimbles worth of milky moon
can touch hearts larger than a thimble.

O my love,
O is was a funny little thing
to be the ones to've seen

Does this all sounds a little too Rennaisance Faire for a cynic like me? Not really. Apparently the glockenspiel is enjoying quite a revival. Green Day, Radiohead, Panic! at the Disco and The Arcade Fire have used the glockenspiel as background, although when I saw Aracde Fire at the Download Festival and I don't recall seeing a glockenspiel. It's not the kind of thing that goes unmissed, really, although I don't think there's many instruments they don't use. I just wish I'd had occasion to comment at the time, "Nice use of glockenspiel."

A and K have been folowing her music for a number of years. A recommends the album "Milk-Eyed Mender" for the Newsom novice. She is a cousin of the SF Mayor so I wore my best I'd Be Surprisingly Good For You smile in hopes that he would make an appearance, but my life remains Gavin-free. More information about the enigmatic Ms. Newsom on her just-enthusiastic-enough-not-to-be-scary fan site.