That I am hip and urban? I went out to a concert last night (on a school night! how daring!) and it was a truly eclectic artist, the harpist Joanna Newsom. She plays a massive harp, it's at least twice as big as she is, but she plays folk/pop/magic songs with the harp, and sometimes additional guitar or drums. She's got a new album on which she plays with an entire orchestra, but she's touring with a 5 piece, stripped down version of that orchestration. Amazing - she played a few tunes alone from earlier albums, then sat down with her band and played her entire new album start to finish.
When I say she plays the harp, she PLAYS. It is astonishing to watch how fast her fingers move - you can't even distinguish how the notes you hear match up with the movement of her hands. Her lyrics also stun me. A review I read described her lyrics as "lapidary", and I confess I had to look that up (it was a Brit writing, naturally, my mother is right, they DO have better vocabularies than Americans), but it turns out the word is perfect. Lapidary is an adjective describing the conciseness, precision, and refinement of expression associated with the cutting of gems. So, yes, her lyrics are like precisely cut jewels. The words shimmer because of where she places them, how she shapes them.
So why is she not storming the airwaves? Well, of course, she plays folk sounding music on a harp, it's hardly mainstream, but also, her voice is unusual, reedy, peircing. I like it enormously myself but my boyfriend does liken her to a drunk Appalachian white trash child. He is NOT hip and urban, like myself, and did not go see her play.
As you might expect, such an alternative player attracts an alternative crowd - not even an Alternative crowd, not your stereotypical urban music goer (who, for some reason in my mind, looks like a member of Panic! at the Disco without, or possibly with, the makeup). No, this was a meshing of people who might play Dungeons and Dragons and people who just came from work at the bank, a mom and dad with their five year old child next to a poseur with vintage leather jacket.
It was heartening, because Joanna Newsom is really alluring, and it was nice to see that her music has enough appeal to sell out two shows at the Logan Auditorium.
Also, I like feeling hip enough to be on the inside of a music sensation.
