- Jelly and ice cream on the rider
- Resplendent in blue wonder woman attire
- Mesmerizingly exotic with a blend of spontaneous rhythm sensually blessed and harpsonically enthralling
- Not bad. Lacking some guitars and feedback though
- It’s ok but I think I’ve stood on a few pixies and crushed their wings.
- Beautiful! Like nothing I’ve ever heard before. The real thing.
- I feel like I’m in a dream
- Voice perfect – better than on record. Beautiful idiosyncratic, ethereal loveliness. Long live the harpies!
- It’s great, but I can’t help being a little bored.
This gig was meant to be seated – a solo harpist doesn’t normally play to a standing rock crowd, but sales were brisk and more tickets released, resulting in a capacity crowd. So when Joanna Newsom took to the stage, opened her arms into a cruciform gesture and started singing unaccompanied and without a microphone, the frisson that swept the room was electric and the audience immediately rapt. Newsom has swept to cult status in a very short time – her album The Milk-Eyed Mender has been a word of mouth success and one appearance on Later with Jools Holland entranced most who saw it. Part of a loose collective of new folk musicians (she has connections to Devendra Banhart and Will Oldham) Newsom’s sound transcends description, those most often made are to Bjork and Kate Bush, but comparisons are generally redundant as her child-woman voice and exquisite filigree harpistry combine to make music that is new and enthralling. Some of the things that make her music and this gig so unique also contribute to the drawbacks – that, guest flautist apart, there is little variety purely harp and voice, eventually let minds and attention wander and the audience volume to creep up after a pin-drop opening. Such a lack of dynamics could have been a drawback, however, her lyrical twists and turns, reminiscent of Liz Fraser of the Cocteau Twins with words like ‘dirigibles’ ‘wimble’ and ‘thimble’ in one song, do keep the brain occupied and the versatility of her harp playing prevented boredom. One lyric states "this is an old song and these are old blues" and that holds some of the essence of her work –Ìý a sense of the old songs and stories that were passed down in the old oral tradition – the reason that folk music resurges every few generations, it’s in there, deep down and sometimes it takes a magical voice and song-writing like that of Joanna Newsom to release it. | 
