Baroque-pop musician Joanna Newsom stopped at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall on Monday, March 28, to remind us all that she’s a fairy princess.
Opening for Newsom was Robin Pecknold, the former frontman of the Seattle-based indie-folk group Fleet Foxes. The reverberating, hollow acoustics of the monolithic concert hall amplified his bellowing voice and added an incredible punch. During his all-too-brief 30-minute set, Pecknold, armed with a guitar, shared unreleased solo tracks and one Fleet Foxes song, “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song.”
Robin Pecknold shared unreleased solo songs at the Arlene Schnitzer Monday night (Hannah Steinkopf-Frank/Emerald).
Stage banter was spared during his withdrawn stage presence, but Pecknold did mention that he’s been to the Arlene Schnitzer before – when he lived in Portland for two years – to see comedian Dave Chapelle. He also gave an ironic shout-out to Saffron Cornmeal, a contentious new café in North Portland that serves “English food from the colonies of the British empire” that popped up in an increasingly gentrified neighborhood.
Joanna Newsom took the stage wearing a floor-length floral gown and platform heels, accompanied by five other musicians, including her sister Emily Newsom on the cello and multi-instrumentalist Ryan Francesconi, who helped arrange Newsom’s two-hour album Have One on Me.
The musical dexterity of Newsom and company is unmatched. The baroque-pop group had a number of instruments at its disposal – violas, violins, recorders, mandolin, timpani, cello, keyboards, flutes and several others. Francesconi switched between tambura, guitar, bass and banjo, oftentimes playing more than one instrument during a single track.
(Hannah Steinkopf-Frank/Emerald).
The 90-minute set featured several tracks from Newsom’s four albums – including “Anecdotes” and “Sapokanikan,” the opening songs from her newest album Divers. Newsom was interchangeably installed behind the harp and the piano during these songs. But it doesn’t suffice to say she plays the harp and piano and sings; she yanks on the strings, pounds on the piano and howls, “Nor is there cause for grieving / Nor is there cause for carrying on.”
Attending a Joanna Newsom concert is much like reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov; it’s overwhelmingly beautiful, but you almost feel like you need a dictionary just to keep up.
(Hannah Steinkopf-Frank/Emerald).
Her more epic-length tracks, like “Have One on Me” or “Monkey and Bear” from Ys, demonstrated that the studio recordings don’t do Newsom justice; only when you see the performance unfold live can you understand the intense degree of arrangement that goes behind these songs. The backup singers’ uncanny harmonies, Newsom’s soprano tremolo and the rattling tambourines added unreal texture to the orchestrations.
Newsom (left) and Pecknold (right) duet during “Good Intentions Paving Company” (Hannah Steinkopf-Frank/Emerald).
Pecknold returned to share the stage and perform a duet with Newsom for “Time, As a Symptom” and “Good Intentions Paving Company,” during which Francesconi and Newsom shared some playful back-and-forth between his banjo plucking and her piano tinkering. During the encore, Pecknold and Newsom dueted on “On A Good Day” and “Baby Birch,” and Newsom cooed, “Be at peace, baby, and be gone.”