Don’t ask me which disc of Joanna Newsom’s fantastic Have One On Me is musically the best; I couldn’t tell you. She’s sequenced her albums in such a way that not only do each of the three discs work as an individual album with a beginning, middle and end, but the standout tracks are so evenly spaced over the three discs that there’s nary an argument to be made which of the three is made up of better songs.
Why then, if the songs themselves are equally rewarding and engaging, does disc two seem to captivate me more than disc one? It could only be the clever track sequencing.
Disc two begins with “On A Good Day,” by far the shortest song to be found Have One On Me, and it works effectively as a short introduction to the disc. The sweet ditty ends too soon, but being that it’s followed by the joyful, horn-aided waltz of “You and Me, Bess,” the listener needn’t fret too long.
The disc’s most seamless transition might be that between “Jackrabbits” and album highlight “Go Long,” who share a similar lyrical theme that the latter picks up from where the former left off. The cascading harp of “Go Long” brings the listener to album-closer “Occident,” whose sombre tone and minor chords truly feel like a farewell, which only serves to further accentuate the disc’s cohesion and perfect sequencing.
Disc two is also the shortest of the three discs, by around nine minutes. That the delicate centrepiece “In California,” whose sparse harp plucks are punctuated by a rolling timpani, is the longest track on disc two speaks to that succinctness. This brevity, like the disc’s opening track, leaves the listener wanting more and thus, might be the most effective of Have One On Me’s three discs.
Just don't call it the best.
