Joanna Newsom announces triple album

Singer-songwriter and harpist Joanna Newsom has revealed the first details of her third album, the follow-up to 2006's acclaimed orchestral opus Ys. Now unveiled as a triple LP, Have One On Me will be released internationally on 23 February. Despite her youth (she is just 28), and her home in hippie-dippy breezy California, Newsom is notorious for her meticulous compositions and conspicuous virtuosity – instrumental, lyrical and conceptual. On Ys, she sang intricate narratives of longing and loss, bolstered by arrangements by Van Dyke Parks. Her 2007 EP, Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band, took an early song, Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie, and added more elaborate instrumentation. Yesterday, Newsom released the first official sample of Have One On Me, a track called '81. It is streaming now at the website of US label Drag City. The track has Newsom performing solo with harp, singing a serious story about love and trust in the Garden of Eden. Her voice has mellowed, sounding more conventionally pretty. '81's melody is brambled, shifting, and not meant for humming. Of course, three LPs requires a lot of material. '81 might not be a long track but Newsom has played many new tunes at recent concerts, several of them epic. Though the tracklist for Have One On Me has yet to be released, there's much talk of songs like Jack Rabbits, Soft As Chalk, and Esme. The new album, Newsom reportedly told Australian radio , is a "cross" between her first and second records. Newsom has also released the cover art for Have One On Me, which has little in common with the old-fashioned portraiture of Ys. Plain black, with a rather kitschy art deco font, the cover is evocative of a mid-1990s underground dance record. Perhaps there will be a Tony Di Bart remix.