Our boy Will Neibergall had apt insight regarding Joanne Robertson’s [hauntological, hypnogogic, Blunt] folk. He mused:
“Apprehending abstraction in Robertson’s music is similar to apprehending it in her paintings: at first you don’t see it at all, or you think it crude or forced, until finally you’ve fallen into it and can’t get out.”
Although I’m not familiar with Robertson’s paintings, I saw my own process of artificial dislike give way to embracing the music’s meta-elegance while watching her video for “Black Moon Days,” directed by Jasper Baydala.
Will heard Joni in her melancholic delivery — a fleeting reference — as Joanne’s specific affect strips the legendary songstress’ acrobatic delivery down into haunting phrases that meditate on the sincerity of its embodied medium. Yet, perhaps it was the Charlie Kaufman-esque imagery of the video that brought back visions of 2007, a reference that transformed her melody to evoke a forgotten love for folk heroes like Vashti Bunyan and Karen Dalton. Robertson’s approach to the “classic” as it relates to white female emotionalism is not an act of desecration, but one of interfacing with a medium that has been consistently depreciated through our own inattentive attitude to its text.
It’s in that spirit that Robertson succeeds in crafting moments of strained quietude in our otherwise suffocating discourse.
• Feeding Tube Records: http://feedingtuberecords.com
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