Brow Beat

Watch Joanna Newsom Perform With Fleet Foxes’ Robin Pecknold and Dirty Projectors’ Amber Coffman

On Saturday, celebrated chamber-folk songstress and master-harpist Joanna Newsom took her show to L.A.’s Orpheum Theater, and she brought reinforcements. Fleet Foxes frontman Robin Pecknold, the tour’s opening act, and the Dirty Projectors’ Amber Coffman joined Newsom onstage for two songs—Divers closer “Time, as a Symptom” and Have One on Me standout “Good Intentions Paving Company,” the latter of which was conveniently captured on video.

The camerawork doesn’t show much of Newsom herself, focusing instead on the fun being had by the head-bobbing, body-swaying, smile-cracking back-up team of Pecknold and Coffman, whose warm vocal harmonies and drum-less drumstick tapping help to flesh out the song’s country-soulful shuffling grooves. Newsom’s delicate vocals and densely-woven lyrics rightly take center stage for a quieter mid-song interlude before the guest duo’s wordless chorus beckons the full band back for a re-energized instrumental coda.