The other night I rediscovered an old audience video recording of Joanna Newsom playing live in Philly. I wrote this one up favorably before, but Mike McLatchey does it better at Outer Music Diary. Here’s part of what he said:

…where I was expecting something related to indie rock, I ended up watching a virtuoso harpist and band play a unique blend of folk music, classical sophistication and modern song stylings. Vocally she reminds me quite a bit of a nascent Alanis Morrisette although a Morrisette infected by some old Appalachian folk singer. It’s clear she’s a prodigy and while I was warned about her voice, which must have spawned from the fact she hadn’t started singing until recently, I found her style to be warm and intimate. Her harp playing is another matter, it at least seems masterful, an adjective I’m hesitant to use being that I can count the harpists I know on one hand. But this is skill, just watching her two hands, as independent as a good drummer’s, play counter melodies and rhythms, often changing or doubling tempos within an overall 4 beat itself, was mesmerizing. It’s kind of baffling she has the popularity she does, although her combination of accessible songcraft with virtuoso musicianship is a rare one.

Yes: the joy of this video is getting to see Newsom play harp. Wow. Oh hey, and the torrent is still (barely) alive at Dimeadozen, amazingly enough. Go fetch if you’re a fan, you won’t regret it.

EDIT: Please click through to the comments for a direct download of the video. Thanks to Will Davis!

A couple unexpected reviews of proggy albums at indie-rock review sites kick off 2007: Pitchfork reviews Opeth’s Ghost Reveries; and Stylus reviews Älgarnas Trädgård’s Framtiden är ett svävande skepp, foränkrat i forntiden. The latter is particularly unexpected, but apparently that classic of Swedish psych-rock has recently been reissued.

Also, for those who haven’t been paying attention for the past few weeks, Mike McLatchey’s excellent Outer Music Diary has been revived and the posts are coming fast, furious and informative.

I mentioned in passing, a few entries ago, Mike McLatchey’s Outer Music Diary, a Yahoo! group in which Mike and other contributors post short blurbs about everything they’ve been listening to lately. I am happy to spread the word that Mike’s project is no longer private, and is now hosted in blog form on the same server as Mike Borella’s excellent Avant Music News. I urge anyone interested in the types of music covered by this site to go check Outer Music Diary — it represents a great new approach to music “reviewing,” emphasizing the reality of the experience of listening rather than treating music writing as the more objective exercise that traditional reviews represent.

The best thing about this move (aside from OMD becoming publicly accessible) is that it’s now available through an RSS feed, something that the horribly counterintuitive Yahoo! Groups interface is probably years away from developing.