¤ milky moon ¤

Personally I love the arrangements very much, and even better than the live versions. But I think Joanna is aware they might not be to everyone's liking. In the Libération interview she says the effect she was after was inspired by albums like Joni Mitchell's Blue, Randy Newman's Nilsson sings Newman and Roy Harper's Stormcock, where she loved the sense of ever expanding space, that all the different instrument or vocal layers brought. She likened them to "angels rolling down from heaven" or: "a bucket of water in your face".

I was expecting this album to be incredible but, not sure how, it exceeded my expectations. Joanna is incapable of putting out something bad, though I am completely amazed by this record!

Anecdotes (especially the second half); Leaving the City; Goose Eggs; Divers; A Pin-Light Bent and Time, as a Symptom are among my favorite tracks, even though I love them all!
I adore the structural complexity of some of the songs, all the instrumentation is absolutely on point, I love how innovative the usage of keyboards and synths sound for her music, it isn't something we are used to, I guess. But I'm getting used to it, and I'm loving it! Her songwriting, once again, never fails to impress me.
Couldn't have wished for something better!

P.S.: Super curious about the tour too! Considering some of the songs have both piano and harp playing at the same time, I wonder which instrument she's going to opt for in live performances. Exciting!

I didn't get my preorder of the album until yesterday and I was dead set on listening to it for the first time on vinyl, so I am really late to this party! I have only listened to it once and I can already tell a lot of the songs are going to be growers.

The songs that made me cry the first time I heard them were Anecdotes, Sapokanikan, Divers, You Will Not Take My Heart Alive, A Pin-Light Bent and Time, As a Symptom. I need more time with The Waltz of the 101st Lightborne and The Things I Say but I can tell they're going to grow on me a lot (TTIS is more getting used to a version other than the Pitchfork performance). The only one I am not really sure about it Goose Eggs. I like the lyrics but the musical style is just not my jam. I'm sure I'll probably come to appreciate it in time though. I expected to feel kind of "meh" about Same Old Man since it's not an original but I really love what she did with it. And I appreciate it even more because it's one of the very few songs on this album I will be able to sing along to! She hit so many gd high notes and it sounds beautiful but never in a million years will I be able to hit them.

How would you describe the overall emotional tone of Divers? I've noticed some people have described it as her most lighthearted and playful album, and some have even described it as joyful and life-affirming (I supposed based on Time, as a symptom?). Others have heard it as a more serious or melancholic tone. I find this dissonance interesting, that different people could have polar opposite interpretations of the feeling of the album.

For my part, while I find the instrumentation very playful, I tend to hear the emotional tone overall as quite melancholy. I think I hear it this way because of the twofold focus on memory and death. Memories, even when they are good immediately evoke an awareness of the ephemerality of life. The theme of death of course triggers existential questions that are unsettling to say the least. I often feel the perspectives through which the songs unfold are very internal, inward looking and solitary. Kind of like how "The Things I Say" creates the impression of someone sitting alone in the evening and reminiscing. Its more of an album that represents one's relation to oneself and one's history more than one's relations to other living people. Even in cases when romantic love is evoked it tends to feel like there is a great distance between the characters, as in the song Divers, or else it only appears in a dream (as in Lightborne) which again refers to an internal space of the narrator rather than the living present.

I think its this sense of inwardness and solitariness that define the emotional tone of the album for me. Part of what makes Goose Eggs so likeable and affecting is that it stands out as a bit of an exception where the narrator is relating both to a friend and a "honey" who she knows.

I find it more intellectual than her other albums. More than the others, I think, which still appeal a great deal to the intellect lyrically, but concentrate, musically, on the emotions. This is the most conceptual: time is a clear theme, it's clearly indicated in the structure, the titles of the songs, its recurrence in the lyrics, and it's explored in astonishing depth. Other albums seem to me to explore moods more than ideas.

I totally agree that his is her most conceptual album. In which case the emotional tone may not be the best way to approach the album.

However, for me as a listener it's fundamental to how I relate to the conceptual material. I'm an intellectually curious listener, and I like to go down some of the rabbit holes present in the many references in a song like Sapiokanikan. But ultimately it is how she sings the words "look and despair" that really gets me. If I can place myself in the shoes of a concrete narrator and imagine walking through the parks, encountering rusting monuments, and ruminating on the kinds of thoughts present in the song, that is when it has the greatest impact. Sapokanikan is incredibly successful at presenting so many layered and obscure references while still being easily relatable.

There was a really great article about Divers posted recently and a paragraph summed up the emotional perspective of the album very well in my opinion. I will post it here when I find it.

Found it! the article is from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/musi ... shing.html

"In these moments the preoccupation with time also seems to be about coming into fully fledged adulthood, all too aware of youth passing into retrospect, of the ultimate threat of mortality, and of the complicated choices to be made in-between—including where to settle (“Leaving the City”) and (most conspicuously in “Time, as a Symptom”) what it might mean to bring a child into the flux of time with you."

This is the emotional territory I hear represented across the album.

I think I get your point better now. I think that both contemplative and nostalgic are really good words to capture the feeling of the album. I think I was using words like inward-looking and solitary to capture a similar idea, but they don't quite work. Contemplative or reflective are better because they aren't limited to a train of thought that is directed solely "inwardly," whatever that even means!

I do get a sense of a kind of distance in relation to the subject matter that could be called philosophical. The themes are "big" and in trying to grapple with them the album steps outside of any one particular perspective in order to gain an overview of the big picture, which could be applied to the time/death in the abstract but also a taking stock of ones particular life trajectory, past and future. (I recall one interview where Joanna describes this with reference to looking down at a landscape from a great distance.) However, as you note, this distant, reflective perspective doesn't lead to the implications of the themes being any less keenly felt. Pin Light is particularly intense in this regard. I agree that the melancholic tone is not necessarily despairing, but closer to an ambiguous sadness/wondering/questioning.

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