http://www.nowtoronto.com/music/story.c ... 26,11,2006
JOANNA NEWSOM Ys (Drag City)
Rating: NN
Being the only person on the whole freak-folk scene playing solo harp concerts makes for a boffo gimmick, but Joanna Newsom is sharp enough to realize that while indie rock fans might be dazzled by the novel instrument, she needed something more musically substantial for her sophomore album. So for Ys, she enlisted Van Dyke Parks to create some elaborate string and horn arrangements to complement the fluttery interplay of her voice and harp on which the album's fancifully florid song-poems (sans choruses) are based. Unfortunately, the grand concept appears to have been a bit too ambitious for the 24-year-old Newsom and her associates to pull off, since what she plucks and sings in her little-girl-lost warble never seems entirely integrated with the hovering orchestral parts that sound like bleed-over from a symphony rehearsal in the room next door. Nice try, though.