When was the last time you experienced a Concert Conversion: a live performance that made you sit up wide-eyed and –eared to completely re-evaluate an artist? And did that conversion hold up on disc?

It was with some dragging of feet that I made my way to Californian singer-songwriter-harpist Joanna Newsom’s concert at the City Recital Hall last week. I’d managed to resist the hype and avoid her Sydney Festival and Sydney Opera House performances for the past few years; her harp strings had failed to tug on my heartstrings.

My main objection has always been the affected, cloying tone of her voice, which seemed to me to pipe up somewhere between yowling possum and frisky porpoise. Concert promoters have described it as “untamed” – I wrote it off as unlistenable. What critics praised as conceptual depth and superb orchestral arrangements on her sophomore album Ys, I chalked up to bombastic self-indulgence.

At last, I have allowed myself to be cajoled into seeing what all the fuss is about, if only because she continues to tour Australia annually. I was ready to shrug off yet another facet of the Joanna Newsom experience, but it...