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preg_replace(): The /e modifier is no longer supported, use preg_replace_callback instead ¤ milky moon ¤ • View topic - Favourite Album
It's overused? Now, why did you have to tell me that? I was just fine with her music until you mentioned that. It's all ruined for me now. Ruined! Totally, irrevocably ruined! Uh...what were we talking about?
Yes, I find that I like her music BECAUSE of those things. Just about every singer or musician that really stands out in my mind does similar things, using a certain mood, phrasing, chord progression, etc. that makes the music recognizably theirs, even to a musically-uneducated clod like me. Don't let the intimate knowledge of those wrinkles or stretchmarks turn you off. They can actually be quite sexy.
Ys will forever be my favourite. It's on such a high pedestal in my mind that I can't imagine any other album ever taking it's place (even another of Joanna's). The imagery is so beautiful, I'm in love with Northern American landscapes and I think they're in there a lot, paired with the coded emotional revelations, all delivered in the most beautiful language I've ever read (my humble opinion, bah!) backed by the orchestral arrangements which are just too beautiful for words (there are two second snippets that I rewind then replay, then rewind and replay because I love the violin part so much). I'm fully aware that I love Ys so much that I'm totally impervious to any of its faults (they don't exist do they??), but I don't even care. It's just the most beautiful, detailed world to be able to delve into. I get so mushy and overly romantic whenever I talk about it.
I took about a year to totally warm to HOOM, for about six months I only listened to maybe 6 songs on it, but I'm totally converted now (except for No Provenance). I get a bit irritated when people say it's too long- I wouldn't cut out a single song if I had the option, and really, if you can't listen to it all in one sitting, then it's been broken down into three separate albums! I suppose I understand the critiscm about chord progressions/ tango rythyms (though I don't understand it, I've never learnt an instrument), but other than that I think alot of it's just impatience.
I don't think you can really make a case for the overuse of the 'tango rhythm'. A lot of the time she just delays the beat, creating that tango feel. In any case, the way she fills out her chords is quite similar, but that doesn't bother me, that's just her style.
Picking up on her theme of 'songs I haven't fully warmed to (yet)', I'd like to suggest [and again, I hate to seem critical] the following - MEM: Cassiopiea; Swansea Ys: Monkey & Bear HOOM: No Provenance; You & Me, Bess; Occident; Autumn; Jackrabbits
But even though I have listed 5 of HOOM's 18 tracks, I too am glad they are there. They are not "badlands" for me, but places I have yet to fully explore. So it is an album that does not give up all its charms in the first week, and will hopefully provide enough new pleasures until the next one comes along! Like Sophie, I am all in favour of its length.
desert island with one album - Milk eyed mender every time.
i feel that i can put the milk eyed mender on at any time, any place, whatever im feeling like, and it is always the perfect listen. i find with Ys, i have to be in the mood, and have to listen to the album all the way, and it needs to be a decent set of speakers, i cant just sit and listen to emily or cosmia then go and do smoething else, i have to be in the right place and right vibe to put it on and listen all the way through. i find have one on me kinda similar, although not totally in the same way. i just find i have to like TRY to listen to them, whereas the milk eyed mender requires nothing but to press play and it makes me happy. (totally not putting down have one on me and Ys....just bigging up the milk eyed mender).
PLUS----- clam crab cockle cowrie isnt on Ys or have one on me...
Milk Eyed Mender remains my favorite. I feel like her voice sounded best there, plus all the songs were just as meaningful but much easier to digest and understand. I mean, I liked Ys, but before I got it I had to read through the lyrics multiple times, then even read them out loud to myself. Previously, especially in "Only Skin" my brain was just flashing "Okay, nice, but what the devil is this woman going on and on about?" Then Have One on Me is just way too long for me. I think if you could pinpoint one trait that defines my personality, it's that I have a very short attention span for everything (except when I'm playing piano) and I always tune out before disc one is even done and it becomes background noise. Very pretty background noise, but still not reaching the most active parts of my brain.
And he used to make me pray, wearing a mask like a death's head. When he put me there in the back seat, and he said, "Jesus save me, Jesus save me."
Unlike most of you guys, I don't love every album. I'm actually not fond of HOOM. I do like some tracks (hoom and easy mainly) but I'm still confused by the tone, a bit too gentle and soft to me. Also it's really too long imo, I really have trouble to stay focus all the way
About MEM, that I discovered after Ys, at first I was like "well, that's pretty raw, she needed more experience I guess". But after some listen and some times I noticed that more and more songs stayed stuck in my head. I wasn't even sure I really liked them or if they were just stuck in my head. But that's how I started to really like the album and now I really do like it a lot. I couldn't say it's one of my all time favourite or even that I really LOVE it tough. Dude inflamatory writ keeps start playing in my head right now, I can hear the first chords again and again
But Ys... At first I just felt that it sounded quite good, but the way songs were built made it hard for them to really stick to me... I mean the same song changes a lot and after listening I was like "I can't even remember in my head what it was like". Once I got used to the album, I was more and more blown away. Especially Only skin and Emily, those really did mindfuck me, I was wondering how a song can be that surprising and yet still make perfect sense. I don't think I had ever experienced that emotion with music. That's how I became a Joanna's fan
Today only skin and emily are my two favorite songs of all time
Ooh... It's been such a long time I've not come on here...
I voted "HOOM", allthough I just LOVE JN's three albums, "Ys" being my least favourite, probably because of the orchestral arrangements (I much prefered the arrangements on live sessions of the tour!). "TMEM" is still one of my favourite debut albums of all times BUT to me "Have one on me" is just a perfect album: Joanna's voice is just beautiful, you go through a very ecclectic collections of songs ("Ys" sounds much more homogeneous, and I think on the whole, I always prefered diversity. Each time I listen to "Ys", it sounds much longer than "Hoom" despite the lenghts of these two albums). I really like the idea of 3 discs, it really makes me feel I have the choice. I can listen to the whole thing (which I do most of the time!) or concentrate on just one of the discs, each of them having a very different energy to the other ones. I also love to open that little box wondering "What am I gonna do?...", knowing that if I choose to listen to the first disc, there are big chances I'll listen to the whole thing... I fear I have some kind of a fetishist relationship with "HOOM", and I just love that!
Eventually, what I like in "HOOM" is it really made me comfident about Joanna's artistic future. After "Ys", I really didn't know what to expect from this future: could she really be able to do better? Not only I think she did, but now I kind of know Joanna Newsom definitely is one of the most interesting "pop" artists of our times, but she'll be a "classic" of the future. "HOOM" implied for me a great faith in her creative skills to come.
I do love HOOM as well, but I think a lot of the live performances are far better than the versions on the album for a lot of the songs. If HOOM sounded as good as a studio-recorded version of the Sydney Opera House performance, it'd be a dead heat between HOOM and Ys. Ys sounds just as good on the album as it does live - there are a few live versions of Ys that are really interesting, usually because the instruments are different, but none of them are better than the album recording in the way that, say, the Somerset House version of Baby Birch is better than the comparatively sedate and lifeless album version. I do like the bit at the end of the album version, but if it'd had the vocals from live recordings it would have been so much better. And it's not the only song to suffer like that - Jackrabbits is similar, and even the strongest songs on the album, like Soft as Chalk and Have One On Me often sound better when she sings them live, I think.
I think we are dealing with several things here(in HOOM) that cause the official recording to differ so much from the live stuff "we" love.
1. she no longer is playing these songs live until they have reached critical mass, sadly perhaps this is somewhat our own fault for recording them and making these half finished songs readily available to the public before she has decided they are finished and ready to record(i really really miss this). This early playing of live unfinished songs allowed them to morph into the forms they were best suited by, through repeated live playing and subtle changes made by Ryan and Neal to structure and tempo over time.
2.Vocals- i don't think i ever have heard such a huge change in the vocal output of a star artist before, Esme before her vocal node condition(and her misuse of her voice;drinking and untrained strain) is simply light years away from the "recorded" version, i think in HOOM, which is recorded fairly early on after her recovery and we just don't have the same voice that was there early in her career, or even now that she has become much more adept at using her vocal training...and her new voice.
3.Moving away from the kora time patterns so prevalent in her first 2 albums, this a subtle yet huge change in her music. I for one am both glad and sad to see it, it shows her growth as an artist, that she isn't a one trick pony, that she is willing to expand and take in new forms. Very few poets are good enough to write only sonnets their whole career
So adding up these 3 changes, HOOM is(in many ways) an utterly different musical output from the ones we have experienced from Joanna before, for me as a fan, in the case of Esme that output falls far short of my expectation. But for several of the other songs it opens whole new fields of exploration, to my great joy. I do however wish she would return to maturing her songs in the crucible of live performance and just thumb her nose at us the' bastards recording', to me it adds so much to the recorded songs. I like HOOM but in some ways i like it differently than i like Y's and MEM. I just think it is important that we take these changes into consideration when we think on the differences between the live recordings and the album.
dwain
The thing i like best about deciphering Joanna's songs...i'm always wrong.