• Music

    Brilliant Songs #27:
    Joanna Newsom’s “Baby Birch”

    Sometimes, all we want and need is a short declarative bellow hooked into something hummable and danceable. “I wanna hold your ha-aa-aa-a-anddd!” “I can’t get noooo….satisfack-shun!” “I seeee the ba-ad moon a-risin’!” Other times, we slow the pace, lower the volume and still ourselves for a close listen to a story as it unspools from the mind and imagination of a singing poet as she frames a multi-layered tale across time, space and memory. Her songs consistently beg big questions but just as consistently refuse the beggar, short-circuiting our Need to Know… At 40 years old, the nearly unclassifiable Joanna…