Joanna Newsom chooses to explore these certainties not from an arm’s remove but with a verbal intimacy and some of the more buoyant music of her career, one already dotted with florid effervescence. Sure, it helps that her chief instrument is the harp, that most celestial string instrument. Its very timbre sends melodies into the ether. Ask any harpist to play something dark and heavy for you as a experiment: Even Black Sabbath or Metallica on harp sounds like the angels giggling. (Bret McCabe)

> READ MORE