Have One on Me

Recorded across California and New York in 2009: T.J. Doherty took the harp and piano at Radiostar in Weed, other instruments went down at Fantasy and Sear Sound, and Noah Georgeson recorded the vocals at King Sound & Pictures. Ryan Francesconi arranged and conducted, recording his own parts in Trinidad, California. Newsom developed nodules just as the main vocals were due, and the sessions froze while she kept working on piano and harp. O'Rourke in Tokyo and Georgeson in Laurel Canyon mixed it. It was issued on three LPs, three CDs or three cassettes, with a 32-page lyric booklet in the box.

It held number one on the US folk chart for four weeks, reached 7 on the US independent chart and 28 in the UK, and gave her a first Canadian chart entry. Metacritic scores it 85, and Pitchfork gave it 9.2. Rolling Stone said it established her as a songwriter to be reckoned with, while Slant called it a pretentious mess. It was number one of the year for The Observer and Uncut, second for Ann Powers in the Los Angeles Times and third for The New York Times and The Wire.