Joanna Newsom on 'Next Time Around'

Last year, darling of the ‘nu-folk’ movement Joanna Newsom appeared on NPR’s online music show All Songs Considered. As guest DJ she discussed her music with sycophantic host Bob Boilen and played some favourite tracks. Intrigued as I am by her elfin stage presence and exotic songwriting, I’m afraid I can never get past the Lisa-Simpson vocals. In short, la Newsom doesn’t do it for me. But her list of influences is something else. In a playlist entirely in thrall to her parents’ generation she chose music by Van Dyke Parks, Randy Newman, Lindsey Buckingham… and Sandy Denny. I almost began to warm to the young Californian when I heard what she heard in ‘Next Time Around’:

Relating to what you just pointed out – the tone-shifting – that’s one thing I would relate to Sandy Denny and Randy Newman specifically. But in the case of Sandy Denny I think one of her incredible gifts was as just an unbelievable sort of melodist. Like, I don’t think there are very many people making music who have ever been like this or who ever will be like this. It’s almost like, I don’t know, Paul McCartney or something like that. Like, her sense of melody and sort of the interval separating each progressive note of her melody is so incredibly deliberate - it’s just like carving out some sculpture or something. I mean, it manages to feel fluid and intuitive but at the same time from, like, a compositional perspective or whatever, it’s just unbelievably ambitious and interesting and just reaches such incredible heights. And then there’s this sort of bedrock shifting tonality of the piano part in that song – it, like, slays me! [19’ 53" to 20’ 58" in archived programme]
http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/archives/djnewsom/

Her analogy with scupture is spot-on. What Newsom probably doesn’t know is that Denny’s favourite medium in her art school days was sculpture. It inspired one of three unfulfilled early ambitions she confided to Anne Nightingale in 1971:

Deep down inside me I thought I would do something, but maybe every little girl has that . Everybody has huge fantasies. I thought I was going to be this great ballet dancer, and a sculptor, and Edith Cavell… [Petticoat, 20.2.1971]