Joanna Newsom @ the Swedish American Hall

Joanna Newsom started off her set last Saturday at the Swedish American Hall by walking from her luminous harp to the front of the stage. With a childish happiness and disregard, she abruptly started singing "The Side of the Blue," cooing the audience to clap along. The crowd poured back with the chorus: "We do!" and an inundation of applause.

This moment exemplified the elements that make Noise Pop wonderful, which is the close environment between artist and audience, not only with smaller venues but also with a feeding off of energy and dialogue.

The harp seems to be an extension of Newsom, perhaps due to her classical training; through her enthralling performance, they move together. This is most clear in "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie." With lyrics that include the words "sea," "wishy-washy" and "dissolving," the harp allows the drops and fluidity to luxuriate and "swallow your sadness."

With lyrics such as: "I killed my dinner with karate / kick ‘em in the face, taste the body; / shallow work is the work I do," Newsom is one of the few songwriters to have a talent with words. Her songs are delightful, unwrapping petal by petal. Like poetry, each lyric contains a beauty onto itself, but as a whole, the tales coalesce to unfold with aching honesty. It is a tribute to her talent that her lyrics can be meditated on outside of their context.

Yet her songs do not have the affected nature of say, Conor Oberst, that would induce your old roommate to delete every Bright Eyes song from your computer. Though Newsom's voice can sound childlike or whimsical at times, she balances it with a mastery of writing, so that her lyrics are never dull, dry, or recycled.

Newsom's performance follows like a Grimm's Fairy Tale, reminiscent of childhood yet sharing insight into life as an adult. Her songs possess elements of the folksy, occult, and nostalgic. At times she seems a mix of paradoxes: indelible and ethereal.

When she took off her cape, I almost expected her to expose wings and fly off to rid the world of evil.

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