GIG: JOANNA NEWSOM

With a face that could melt ice and a voice that might delicately crack it, Joanna Newsom is an artist both beautiful and brittle. It’s not often that a Nevada-born woman wielding a Celtic harp becomes the darling of indie-pop circles and even rarer that such an oddity is then lambasted by those same circles as being ‘insincere’. With song titles like, Clam Crab Cockle Cowrie and Sawdust and Diamonds, if this strangeness is insincere it is certainly unconvincingly so. Her albums, from The Milk-Eyed Mender to Ys, bridge minimal to monumental, but both share Newsom’s archaic language and the ethereal, old-timer strains of her harp. Ahead of the release of her latest, she revisits Sydney shores to pour some newly crafted cool, Newsom-etched tunes on us. You can expect her self-described “untrainable” vocal stylings overlaid with Appalachian-tinged folk orchestration – and whether you believe it or not, will be for you to decide.

Jan 18, Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, $49-75, 9250 7777 or sydneyoperahouse.com