http://uk.launch.yahoo.com/061122/33/20wc1.html
Joanna Newsom - Ys
(Wednesday November 22, 2006 8:08 PM )
7/10
Released on 13/10/06
Label: Drag City
On paper, it sounds like a masterpiece. Produced by Steve Albini, arguably the most creatively rigorous knob-twiddler at work today. Mixed by Jim O¹Rourke, the Grammy-winning producer and experimental musician. Strings and orchestration by Van Dyke Parks, the legendary Beach Boys collaborator. Backing vocals by Bill Callahan, of Smog. Five tracks, spanning 55 minutes. Even before you get to the unique, otherworldly voice, bizarre, banjo-like harp playing, and twisted, pastoral dreamland of Joanna Newsom, it feels like something extremely special's brewing here.
To begin with, it sounds like a masterpiece as well. When Yahoo! Music last encountered Newsom, at the ICA in November 2004, she was operating at her stark, brilliant best - an eccentric storyteller living in curious fairytale realm, plucking on her harp as if she had a clutch of terrible secrets to unburden. And track one, "Emily", sees her deep in that gloriously unsettling territory, singing darkly about meadow larks while Van Dyke's strings stab and surge around her, like "Fantasia" re-imagined by Tim Burton.
The problems set in as Newsom wanders further into all 12 minutes and seven seconds of "Emily". While she displayed an intuitive understanding of the structure of fairytale storytelling on her "Milk Eyed Mender" debut, here she appears to be operating without a map, a compass or a trustworthy sense of direction. Words tumble out at a steady pace but little emotional clarity, as if she's merely making it all up as she goes along - here she's warbling about baboons and sows and great estates, there she's yelping about meteorites, like she's reading from an autocue set to random poetic prose.
Her devotees will argue that this is precisely what makes "Ys" a masterpiece, that like Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky" or "American Pie" or "Knights In White Satin", that this is a deliberately opaque work, there to be pondered over and unravelled. Which would be fine were the cumulative effect of Newsom's rambling, whimsy of a vocal, and the too-rich, too-enveloping orchestration, not that of a pudding being over egged to the point of nausea. When considering the ICA show, your correspondent decided that: "If this was all swathes of fairy dust, sweeping strings and twee mystery pouring bags of Tate And Lyle on those curious tonsils, then it would be too much to take." Well, here the Tate And Lyle is out in abundance.
So for this critic at least, Newsom's taken a wrong turn. In a bid to make a startling epic work, she's concentrated on the form and neglected the content. While it's impossible not to swoon and gape in awe at the scope of the songs - especially 16 min, 53 seconds long "Only Skin" - it's hard to care about them. Bjork says so much more in half the time, but then you suspect Bjork's only ever been chasing a strong creative urge, whereas here Newsom is consumed by the glitter of a grand event. Others may tell you different, but this empress is in sore need of a tailor.
by Ian Watson