Watch Joanna Newsom debut new music as surprise Fleet Foxes opener

23 March, 2023

Joanna Newsom attends the 2018 Vanity Fair Oscar Party. Credit: Taylor Hill

Joanna Newsom made her return to music last night (March 22) by joining Fleet Foxes as a surprise opener and debuting new music.

The singer and harpist supported Fleet Foxes at the Belasco in Los Angeles, with frontman Robin Pecknold introducing Newsom as “the high priestess of acoustic music”. \

She then took the stage to perform a mix of old and new, unreleased songs. The last time Newsom played a show was in January 2020 in Austin, TX.

Her hour-long set consisted of seven songs. She opened with ‘Go Long’ from her 2010 album ‘Have One On Me’ and ended with ‘Sawdust & Diamonds’ from 2006’s ‘Ys’. The bulk of her set was all unreleased songs which drew up excitement from her fans on Twitter.

She later returned to the stage during Fleet Foxes set for a duet with Pecknold on ‘Blue Spotted Tail’, as well as sitting in with the band while they ended the show with a cover of her song ‘Good Intentions Paving Company’.

Newsom has not released a new album since 2015’s ‘Divers‘, which NME claimed to be “yet another masterpiece”.

“‘Divers’, her unusually tight fourth album, is full of lofty concepts (‘Waltz Of The 101st Lightborne’ sees time-travelling soldiers wage a futile war on their own ghosts) but her crafty tales, signposted by ornate folk arrangements, rarely outpace your imagination,” read the NME review.

In other news, Fleet Foxes are touring in support of their 2020 album, ‘Shore‘.  Last year, they shared a new song called ‘A Sky Like I’ve Never Seen’ and released a book titled Wading in Waist-High Water: The Lyrics of Fleet Foxes, that contains Pecknold’s complete lyrics from 55 songs and includes notes on his creative processes, inspirations, and motivations.

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