“On A Good Day” is one small song within a larger chronicle of songs that describe the complexity of Joanna Newsom’s relationship and break-up with a lover. It is the most concise song on Have One On Me, instrumentally and structurally; at under 2 minutes, the song is communicated almost as a sketch. When I first heard it, I thought the song was a breath of fresh air, sandwiched as it is between songs that clock in at over 9 and 7 miniutes, respectively.
Joanna Newsom’s delivery is never flat, either as a vocalist or as a harpist, but on this track she does not exaggerate her phrasing so much, which leaves the interpretive possibilites more wide open for me as a listener. I find the prettiness to be the easiest thing to take away from this song after a cursory listen, yet it is not why I keep coming back to it: I am drawn to her bitterness and anger at her lover, her resignation to continuing a project in which she longer wants a part, her sense of feeling silenced by someone else’s priorities and her sense of feeling alone in that.
I suppose I could write even more about why I would find these things to be compelling. Suffice it to say I find the self-awareness with which she suffers to be both universal and utterly intimate. Where the original recording is a whisper into someone’s ear, I wanted my interpretation to be a shout into the dark.
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