The Guardian (Alexis Petridis) [5/5]
Posted: 02 Jun 2010, 10:51http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2006/nov/03/popandrock1
Joanna Newsom, Ys
(Drag City)
5 out of 5
Alexis Petridis
The Guardian, Friday 3 November 2006
There is no getting around the fact that Joanna Newsom is an enormously hard sell. Even in a climate in which a major label has given a contract to the Horrors - a band, lest we forget, who appear to have based their sound and their image almost entirely on that of the Savages, the dimly-remembered 1960s rock band fronted by erstwhile Monster Raving Loony Party leader Screaming Lord Sutch - it's hard to imagine Newsom getting further than most record company's receptions. Here is a 24-year-old Californian singing harpist, who wears her hair in braids, seems to have a thing about depicting herself as a medieval wench on her record sleeves and recently claimed her big influence was bassoon-heavy communist prog rock band Henry Cow, famed for decorating their album covers with paintings of socks.
Even people who enthused about Newsom's 2004 debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender did so in terms that made the intrigued-but-uninitiated wonder if giving it a wide berth might not be such a bad idea. Most of the discussion centred around her voice: those who liked it compared it to Marge Simpson, or a small, asthmatic child. Another suggested she sounded "so precious, she's basically a Hummel figurine". People who disliked it tended to describe it in more daunting terms.
Indeed, Newsome's second album seems to be going out of its way to repel what shopkeepers refer to as passing trade. Its title is literally unspeakable - apparently, you're meant to pronounce it "ees". It comes in an embossed sleeve featuring a heavily symbolic painting of Newsom holding a sickle and a mounted butterfly. It features five songs, the shortest of which lasts over seven minutes and the longest nearly 17. The lyric book goes on and on like the Gobi Desert. It may well be the most off-putting album released this year. After playing it, there seems every chance it is the also the most astonishing.
The first sign that something unusual is up comes with the production credits, which feature both Steve Albini and Van Dyke Parks. It takes a unique inspiration to pair a man famed as a producer of such stern austerity that he won't even call himself a producer with a man best-known for creating the 1960s most ornate, rococo albums - the Beach Boys' Smile and his own Song Cycle - but Newsom clearly has unique inspiration to burn. Her songs are remarkable: richly melodic, they ebb and flow in entirely unanticipated directions. The opener, Emily, shifts from brooding to gleeful to sinister to playful and back, Newsom's harp augmented by Parks' wildly inventive orchestrations, which, like the songs themselves, never quite do what you expect. Meanwhile, it's hard not to feel that the topic of Newsom's voice has been a bit overegged. Child-like and breathy, it certainly doesn't sound like anyone else, but you could say the same thing about Ys as a whole, and mean it as the highest praise.
The lyrics are fantastic. You hesitate to compare Newsom to the Fall, partly because she sounds nothing like them and partly because Mark E Smith might get wind that you have equated his band with a singing Californian harpist with plaits and a medieval bent and jump on the first train from Salford with the intention of belting you one. But what Newsom does share with the Fall's dissipated leader is a rare ability to craft lyrics so mysterious and allusive that to all intents and purposes they make no sense, but which still manage to draw you in and hold you with the richness of their language. Doing this is a tall order, particularly when an album features the sheer volume of words that Ys does. There are moments when Newsom stumbles into the grim territory where prog rockers once set up camp: her love of "thee" and "fain" can seem a bit affected. More often, her obvious love of words just carries the listener helplessly along. It's hard to work out what the 16-minute Only Skin is on about, but that doesn't stop you being beguiled by the way she turns a description of a river into something infinitely more lubricious, going from nature trail to knickers off in a matter of seconds: "I watched how the water was kneading so neatly, gone treacly, nearly slowed to a stop; frenzied coiling flush along the muscles beneath," she sings. "Press on me, we are restless things." Nor does it stop the song's denouement, which for some reason concerns a bird flying into a window, from being inexplicably moving.
Ys is full of moments like that: magical for reasons you can't quite put your finger on. Within minutes of it starting, you're struck by the rare sensation that you've entering uncharted, original territory. A hard sell, perhaps, but it could be the best musical investment you make all year.
Joanna Newsom, Ys
(Drag City)
5 out of 5
Alexis Petridis
The Guardian, Friday 3 November 2006
There is no getting around the fact that Joanna Newsom is an enormously hard sell. Even in a climate in which a major label has given a contract to the Horrors - a band, lest we forget, who appear to have based their sound and their image almost entirely on that of the Savages, the dimly-remembered 1960s rock band fronted by erstwhile Monster Raving Loony Party leader Screaming Lord Sutch - it's hard to imagine Newsom getting further than most record company's receptions. Here is a 24-year-old Californian singing harpist, who wears her hair in braids, seems to have a thing about depicting herself as a medieval wench on her record sleeves and recently claimed her big influence was bassoon-heavy communist prog rock band Henry Cow, famed for decorating their album covers with paintings of socks.
Even people who enthused about Newsom's 2004 debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender did so in terms that made the intrigued-but-uninitiated wonder if giving it a wide berth might not be such a bad idea. Most of the discussion centred around her voice: those who liked it compared it to Marge Simpson, or a small, asthmatic child. Another suggested she sounded "so precious, she's basically a Hummel figurine". People who disliked it tended to describe it in more daunting terms.
Indeed, Newsome's second album seems to be going out of its way to repel what shopkeepers refer to as passing trade. Its title is literally unspeakable - apparently, you're meant to pronounce it "ees". It comes in an embossed sleeve featuring a heavily symbolic painting of Newsom holding a sickle and a mounted butterfly. It features five songs, the shortest of which lasts over seven minutes and the longest nearly 17. The lyric book goes on and on like the Gobi Desert. It may well be the most off-putting album released this year. After playing it, there seems every chance it is the also the most astonishing.
The first sign that something unusual is up comes with the production credits, which feature both Steve Albini and Van Dyke Parks. It takes a unique inspiration to pair a man famed as a producer of such stern austerity that he won't even call himself a producer with a man best-known for creating the 1960s most ornate, rococo albums - the Beach Boys' Smile and his own Song Cycle - but Newsom clearly has unique inspiration to burn. Her songs are remarkable: richly melodic, they ebb and flow in entirely unanticipated directions. The opener, Emily, shifts from brooding to gleeful to sinister to playful and back, Newsom's harp augmented by Parks' wildly inventive orchestrations, which, like the songs themselves, never quite do what you expect. Meanwhile, it's hard not to feel that the topic of Newsom's voice has been a bit overegged. Child-like and breathy, it certainly doesn't sound like anyone else, but you could say the same thing about Ys as a whole, and mean it as the highest praise.
The lyrics are fantastic. You hesitate to compare Newsom to the Fall, partly because she sounds nothing like them and partly because Mark E Smith might get wind that you have equated his band with a singing Californian harpist with plaits and a medieval bent and jump on the first train from Salford with the intention of belting you one. But what Newsom does share with the Fall's dissipated leader is a rare ability to craft lyrics so mysterious and allusive that to all intents and purposes they make no sense, but which still manage to draw you in and hold you with the richness of their language. Doing this is a tall order, particularly when an album features the sheer volume of words that Ys does. There are moments when Newsom stumbles into the grim territory where prog rockers once set up camp: her love of "thee" and "fain" can seem a bit affected. More often, her obvious love of words just carries the listener helplessly along. It's hard to work out what the 16-minute Only Skin is on about, but that doesn't stop you being beguiled by the way she turns a description of a river into something infinitely more lubricious, going from nature trail to knickers off in a matter of seconds: "I watched how the water was kneading so neatly, gone treacly, nearly slowed to a stop; frenzied coiling flush along the muscles beneath," she sings. "Press on me, we are restless things." Nor does it stop the song's denouement, which for some reason concerns a bird flying into a window, from being inexplicably moving.
Ys is full of moments like that: magical for reasons you can't quite put your finger on. Within minutes of it starting, you're struck by the rare sensation that you've entering uncharted, original territory. A hard sell, perhaps, but it could be the best musical investment you make all year.