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Good Intentions Paving Company
(Joanna Newsom)
Appears on: Have One On Me (2010)



Twenty miles left to the show
Hello, my old country, hello
Stars are just beginning to appear
And I have never in my life before been here

And it's my heart, not me, who cannot drive
At which conclusion you arrived
Watching me sit here bolt upright and cry
For no good reason at the Eastering sky

And the tilt of this strange nation
And the will to remain for the duration
Waving the flag
Feeling it drag

Like a bump on a bump on a log, baby
Like I'm in a fist fight with a fog, baby
Step-ball-change and a pirouette
And I regret, I regret

How I said to you, "honey, just open your heart"
When I've got trouble even opening a honey jar
And that right there is where we are...

And I been 'fessing double fast
Addressing questions nobody asked
I'll get this joy off of my chest at last
And I will love you 'til the noise has long since passed

And I did not mean to shout, just drive
Just get us out, dead or alive
A road too long to mention, lord, it's something to see!
Laid down by the good intentions paving company

All the way to the thing we've been playing at, darlin'
I can see that you're wearing your staying hat, darlin'
For the time being all is well
Won't you love me a spell?

This is blindness beyond all conceiving
Well, behind us the road is leaving, yeah, leaving
And falling back
Like a rope gone slack

Well, I saw straight away that the lay was steep
But I fell for you, honey, as easy as falling asleep
And that right there is the course I keep...

And no amount of talking
Is going to soften the fall
But, like after the rain, step out
Of the overhang, that's all

It had a nice a ring to it
When the ol' opry house rang
So with a solemn auld lang
Signed, sealed, delivered, I sang

And there is hesitation
And it always remains
Concerning you, me,
And the rest of the gang

And in our quiet hour
I feel I see everything
And am in love with the hook
Upon which everyone hangs

And I know you meant to show the extent
To which you gave a goddang
You ranged real hot and real cold but I'm sold
I am home on that range

And I do hate to fold
Right here at the top of my game
When I've been trying with my whole heart and soul
To stay right here in the right lane

But it can make you feel over and old
Lord, you know it's a shame
When I only want for you to pull over and hold me
'Til I can't remember my own name

___

So, I'm a relatively new Joanna fan, having got caught up in the Have One On Me pre-release excitement in January and February of 2010. Drag City streamed "'81" first and I was hooked by its simple, enchanting beauty. The next one, premiering on February 2, was "Good Intentions Paving Company" and that song really made me sit up and take huge notice. I was initially attracted by the piano lines, the strange melody, her unusual vocal performance with that weirdly affecting nasally vibrato on some notes, and the unexpected change in rhythm and tempo towards the end. Over time, all this continues to impress me – I think it's such a wonderfully-written song – but also now, with the benefit of having heard her whole catalogue, it strikes me as a song that was both very new and bold and different for her while at the same time being completely recognisably Joanna Newsom.

I say bold and new because prior to this song, and the piano songs on Have One On Me, she had not used piano quite so much, and structurally there are some really interesting things going on here (in a more compact way than Ys). It's one of her closest things to a "pop song," but of course, being Joanna, she doesn't do things straightforwardly so her "pop song" ends up being seven minutes. But still it is recognisably her in the general feel. I am not American and haven't been to the US, but a lot of Joanna's music to me feels very American. There's a lot in her catalogue, especially on The Milk-Eyed Mender, that conjures that feeling to me and "Good Intentions Paving Company" does too. It might be in her vocal delivery, or the phrasing of the lyrics like the way she sings "darlin'" and "'fessin'", or the soulful, almost gospel feel of the melody, and it's a gorgeous, warm, classic sound.

That's another thing that strikes me about it: yes, it feels fresh and different but it's also highly reminiscent in parts of some of the finest singer-songwriters of the '70s. I see it as kind of like a tip of the hat to some of those ladies while almost at the same time flaunting (in a good way) that Joanna herself is nestling into that exclusive group of unique and innovative and wonderful artists. When I first heard it, I heard Jane Siberry a lot in the double-tracked harmonies and delicate high notes but these days I also hear more Judee Sill in it (in the soulful, gospel piano feel) and both Judee and Rickie Lee Jones in its warm, almost kind of countrified American sound. There's also a Joni Mitchell feel in the coda with a dollop of Laura Nyro. I feel like an advert for these artists but if you haven't checked them out, please do, you won't regret it!

It remains one of my big faves from the record and from her entire catalogue. It has a real humour to it as well in the lyric and the performance, and it's pretty different to a lot of her stuff, but it also works so well alongside her other songs. And those horns! The use of horns on Have One On Me is so well-placed in general and this is a good example.

I mentioned humour and I do get that in the lyrics - "I regret / How I said to you, "honey, just open your heart" / When I've got trouble even opening a honey jar" is just brilliant - but there's also a real humanity and feeling in a line like "I only want for you to pull over and hold me / 'Til I can't remember my own name." I don't think I need to reiterate how brilliant a lyricist she is.

Also for reference, this song got a 9/10 'Best New Music' rating at Pitchfork prior to the album release

When Joanna Newsom followed her intricate and exhausting 2006 album, Ys, with a live EP that took a pun, Joanna Newsom & the Ys Street Band, for its name, some fans were puzzled. A joke? From Newsom, the harpist-poet with the chirpy voice? The one who'd spent chunks of her 56-minute opus detailing the differences between a meteor, a meteorite and a meteoroid and describing the drowning of a broken bear named Ursula? Wasn't her art beyond humor? Guess not.

"Good Intentions Paving Company", a track streamed by Drag City last week in advance of Newsom's upcoming Have One on Me, may be the most humanizing song we've heard from Newsom. Here, over music that seems unusually earthy and warm and with a clear view of Laurel Canyon, her apparently precise wit assumes a leading role. "I regret how I said to you, 'Honey, just open your heart,' when I've got trouble even opening a honey jar," she twists, the piano and organ that have been pulsing and pealing behind her relenting to a playful banjo-and-guitar gait. She teases her own nervous disposition, segues "Auld Lang Syne" into "Signed, Sealed, Delivered I'm Yours", and compares her love-stricken state of mind to a fistfight with the fog.

Actually, love takes the other lead here. As Newsom, the passenger, and her new partner, the driver, head toward a gig through what seems to be a treacherous mountain pass, she confesses that she's committing: "I fell for you, honey, easy as falling asleep," she sings when she knows they're safe, her voice more tempered and casual than it's often been. She admits she's tried to control her heart, describing the limbo-- to love, or to run-- with a zest for syllables worthy of a backpacker rapper and a Rickie Lee Jones-like knack for shaping bits of verses into little hooks. The song keeps shifting, and each piano line pulls her like rope to a simple romantic conclusion: "I only want for you to pull over, and hold me, till I can't remember my own name." __

Live in Berlin, May 17, 2010



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So, what does everyone else think of "Good Intentions Paving Company"?