Joanna Newsom: The Milk-Eyed Mender

Herald rating: * * * * *

When you possess as many unusual qualities as California's Joanna Newsom, who performs at the Maidment next Sunday, people are either going to love or hate you.

For a start, she plays the harp, an instrument usually reserved for the occasional orchestral flourish, and one she unashamedly wrings every possible nuance from: dreamy arpeggios, jazzily plucked bass notes, mellow, guitar-like strumming.

To keep the textures varied she throws in harpsichord, Wurlitzer, piano and slide-guitar.

Then there's her startlingly childlike voice, one so shrill and pure she could get away with songs about slaying kittens.

She doesn't of course; her song-writing has a romantic, esoteric quality: "Even molluscs have weddings, though solemn and leaden but you dirge for the dead, take no jam on your bread," she intones on Inflammatory Writ.

On Bridges and Balloons she weaves a gypsy yarn of wicker beetle shells, thimbles and milky moons.

Her wry grasp of pop, authentic take of Appalachian folk music and fairy-tale lyricism make this an acquired taste that is worth the risk

Label: Drag City