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For lovers of irony, I sub­mit Joanna Newsom’s 2010 album, Have One On Me. The first song is called “Easy,” and Ms. New­som sings the title, invit­ingly, a cou­ple times. Those famil­iar with Ms. Newsom’s work would prob­a­bly not use that word with regard to her music. Her 2006 album, Ys is a mod­ern cham­ber folk clas­sic, heavy on the harp, con­sist­ing of only five songs, but clock­ing in just short of an hour. The songs on her 2004 debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender are more acces­si­ble in length and style, but Ms. Newsom’s voice — which has been com­pared unfa­vor­ably, albeit fairly, to that of Sandy Cheeks, the squir­rel friend of Sponge­Bob SquarePants — can be jar­ring (per­son­ally, I love it, but I under­stand how it can be off-putting). And so, after only a few sec­onds of “Easy,” the word sud­denly makes sense. Ms. Newsom’s voice is more rem­i­nis­cent of Joni Mitchell than Sandy Cheeks, and the music is warm and evocative.

Then, the song goes on for six min­utes. Then, the album goes on for two hours. It’s a triple LP. It’s 18 songs long. It’s almost as if Ms. New­som is try­ing to main­tain some dis­tance by refus­ing to allow her music to be expe­ri­enced eas­ily. Her first two albums demanded an open mind. Have One On Me demands an open sched­ule. Per­son­ally, I’m not a fan of dou­ble LPs, and I think many of them could be con­sid­er­ably bet­ter if they were whit­tled down to the length of an LP. A triple LP is some­thing else, entirely. I don’t even have a frame of ref­er­ence for some­thing like this. And, still, it’s eas­ily one of my favorite albums of the year.

The ease of Have One On Me may be embed­ded into its unwieldy length. I love to put on my head­phones and pay close atten­tion to an album, but that’s not really some­thing I can do with Have One On Me. Instead, I put it on and read a book or do some things around the house. I have lis­tened to it on a cou­ple of flights, and its dul­cet tones make it a per­fect choice for air­planes. Basi­cally, I go about my life at its most mun­dane while lis­ten­ing. The melodies and the lyrics sort of drift like a fra­grance on a breeze, which — I don’t know — seems to be by design.

I’m think­ing about how life is mostly mun­dane, even if our mem­o­ries are dom­i­nated by the less-mundane moments. Love at first sight lasts a moment, and then love becomes a mat­ter of daily-ness. The sin­ner has the con­ver­sion expe­ri­ence, and then the believer pur­sues a life of dis­ci­ple­ship. There is beauty in the mun­dane that may not be all that fash­ion­able right now. Even with a slag­ging econ­omy, our access to any­thing we want is less fet­tered than ever. I con­fess that this cul­ture of access has done lit­tle to strengthen my patience. I’ve often felt like Homer Simp­son at the Bachman-Turner Over­drive con­cert: “Get to the ‘work­ing over­time’ part!”

Have One On Me is music that redeems the mun­dane. Rest assured, it is replete with prover­bial “work­ing over­time” parts. Sprin­kled through­out the sprawl­ing 124 min­utes are some of the most haunt­ing melodies, some of the pret­ti­est sounds, and some of the most com­pelling lyrics of music in recent mem­ory. For exam­ple, there are thirty sec­onds in the mid­dle of “Easy” that I can’t hear enough…

…Hear the frog going courtin’
till the day he croaks.
Say­ing even then,
how there is light in the river,
and there’s a river made of light.
C’mon, you lit­tle life-giver,
give your life.

This sec­tion starts out with min­i­mal piano tin­kling that builds and is soon accom­pa­nied by a flute, and then an orches­tra. I love every­thing about those thirty sec­onds. In my esti­ma­tion, they are per­fect. Other moments are like that. Granted, none are as suc­cinctly dis­tilled as “work­ing over­time,” but they are per­fect in their own ways. On the title track, Ms. New­som rhymes “King of Bavaria” with “can I see ya,” and I smile reflex­ively every time I hear it. In each of the 18 songs, there seems to be some­thing, how­ever sub­tle, that feels like magic, if for only a sec­ond. The afore­men­tioned redemp­tion of the mun­dane occurs in the spaces between. The less thrilling moments of Have One On Me are nev­er­the­less stun­ning; it is all writ­ten, per­formed, and pro­duced impeccably.

This album may very well be a kind of anti­dote to that thing within me that has me curs­ing the 15-second adver­tise­ments on Hulu and look­ing repeat­edly at my watch while wait­ing for an ele­va­tor. Upon every lis­ten, my admi­ra­tion for Have One On Me seems to be stretched, some­times by only a few sec­onds, and other times by sev­eral min­utes. Joanna New­som did not make Have One On Me easy to con­sume, but she did make it nearly impos­si­ble to turn off.