Having missed Ms Newsom last time she played (had tickets, but wasn’t going to be in the country on the date, so a grateful milkman took them off my hands), there was no way I was making the same mistake this time.  At the Royal Albert Hall of all places.  Not being a seasoned flag-waving Prom-going right-wing berk, I haven’t been to the Royal Albert Hall in years.  It has a much smaller diameter than I remembered it, but makes up for it by being vertiginously tall, with sound-damping roof fungus dangling from the roof on long stalks. 

Early doors, a couple of Joanna Newsom’s friends from California, The Moore Brothers did a very brief (15 minute!) and wholly-passable impersonation of Simon and Garfunkel with one guitar and a bagful of harmonies.  They didn’t have a “Bright Eyes” though.  But then again, neither did Simon and Garfunkel.

Manc folk legend Roy Harper was on next.  I’d seen him play before at the 100 Club, an infuriating event which consisted of 60% hippy chuntering (war is bad, kids!) to only about 40% music.  This time, constrained by his 45 minute slot, he dispensed with the majority of these platitudes in favour of a gritty reading of his classic Stormcock.  It was a winning decision, and one which is bound to have won him a bunch of new fans tonight.  On “The Same Old Rock” and “One Man Rock and Roll Band” he elbows aside his colleague on guitar to dispense some thuddering playing of his own, and you can hear why the Zep were fans. The last of the four tracks “”Me And My Woman” is apparently one of Joanna’s favourites; with its seemingly unrelated sections and unannounced changes in tempo and key, Harper’s upper register swinging from those mushrooms on the ceiling, its influence on her style of song construction couldn’t be more obvious.

The moment the first note escaped Joanna’s lips was a magical one for me, confirmation of the hitherto-unreconcilable notion that that incredible voice really does belong to that person.  From that moment, the hall was a bowl of hush, punctuated by huge ovations after each song.  The band were a four-piece (including violin, banjo/tamboura and percussion), rendering those songs from The Milk-Eyed Mender less of a challenge – “Bridges and Balloons”, “The Book Of Right-On” and the spare, traditional sounding “Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie” were amongst the evening’s many peaks. 

The fact that there was no orchestra immediately stripped some of the Ys songs of perhaps my favourite component, Van Dyke Parks’ inspired off-kilter arrangements.  However, despite a couple of clumsy moments when some overly-loud tamboura would threaten to overwhelm the other instruments, for the most part the reworkings worked well.  The tempo of “Emily” was tinkered with, some sections slower and some faster than on record, while “Monkey and Bear” benefited from a big kettle-drum finale.  The transcription of “Cosmia” did not divest it of any its sense of drama; building perfectly to the squeaky emotions of the “and miss! and miss! and miss!” climax (I must add that it was at this point that I noticed that two members of the band looked – from my vantage point – like the Miliband brothers, seemingly unfazed by all the speculation about whether or not a general election is imminent).  The solo “Sawdust and Diamonds” was unaffected, and was utterly scintillating, Newsom’s hands grabbing skilfully and speedily at bunches of strings like she was in a flower picking contest.

The set ended with a new one – slow and sparse, with lyrics about “a beautiful town with rain coming down” suggesting that it could have been written in London at any point over the last six sodden months.  After an extended standing ovation, we were treated to an encore of extensive and extensively-rejigged epic “Only Skin” before, a Springsteen-esque (well, they are the Ys Street Band after all) two hours after she first appeared on stage, Joanna finally took her bow to some unrestrained adoration and well-deserved applause the likes of which aren’t observed all that often in the RAH’s stuffier events. 

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