¤ milky moon ¤

"The longer you live / the higher the bend" is what I hear. I don't hear her saying 'rent' at all.

The song is already one of my favorites from her.

Added to the lyrics site! Going with "What We Are Allowed" for the title.

Amazing! God I'm so excited to have new stuff!

I note that the poster of this setlist

believes the lyric to be "Beside the red vine..."

I got really stoned, watched the Pitchfork performance of it, and wrote this in the comments:

I think the thematic questions in the lyrics are along the lines of: how do you find/keep/afford a home in which you would live out your days?
Or, maybe, in what ways do 'real estate' and 'domesticity' mediate our desire for a home, or a home-life, or a life-long home that's worth the investment. I mean, she and Andy Samberg just purchased a 6.5 million dollar home in LA that once belonged to Charlie Chaplin. This song must be the anxiety and excitement about these things in her own life.

Like, think about the last verse or so of the song; I think it describes her countdown to moving out of her 'home on the old milk lake', she refers to 'a change that came to pass,' the passage of a time when 'spring did range weeping grass and sleepless broke itself upon [her] window-glass'.

Gasping at the arrival of North Californian springtime, she runs past her doorway and witnesses, for the last time, her once fox-hunted fountain and its fishes 'launched in flight, starched in light, brightly bleeding ... with dawn deleting in that high sun.' A strange vision of mortality and change, beneath knowing it must end.

So I suddenly feel kinda conflicted about having tried to analyse this song- it just seems like a bunch of projections and speculations, and the song hasn't even been released yet! We're not even sure of the actual lyrics!

In the past Joanna's mentioned people online discussing unreleased songs really authoritatively, with titles that she hadn't used herself.. this is like that, but 1000x worse! So I've deleted both of my posts out of respect for Joanna

Okay, I deleted my comments, too. I hope I didn't sound authoritative about anything! I never feel that way. Hopefully none of my comments came across that way, I just love the song and was excited to talk to someone about it, I guess! I didn't realize that Joanna had said that she didn't like people discussing songs online before they're officially released. I feel infinitely respectful of Joanna Newsom and her music, so I'm sorry to have unwittingly partaken in something that would offend her.

So this is "Leaving the City", I guess? I like that the it's the track that follows "Sapokanikan", which is a really in-the-city song... Also, wow, those two tracks right next to each other??
I would if I could, but I can't even.

Ah I don't know, I just had this weird flash of anxiety and couldn't shake the feeling. Sorry if my post made you feel bad about it- you didn't sound authoritative to me at all, and what Joanna said was definitely more in relation to unofficial titles than discussing lyrics. It was really great to bounce ideas around!

Anyhow- it's happening, it's finally happening! It still hasn't sunk in. Sometimes I'll try to imagine how this song will sound, then I realise that no matter what I imagine, the reality is bound to be something that's so far beyond what I'm actually capable of imagining, musically.. She's incredible, she really is.

No worries, I totally understand! I personally tend to want to delete everything I write two minutes after I post it. And - yes, so exciting! It is so fun to anticipate undreamt-of music!

'Leaving the City' premiered today on SiriusXm and is up all over tumblr. The recording is incredible. It has a more chilled out feel than the live Pitchfork performance, which bears the full power and aura of her live playing. The record version is very different, with an unexpected arrangement, but it is all the more satisfying. Her delivery is not rushed in any way, and the drums really balance the beat of the more rapid verses. I love the drones and marxophones, that somewhat grate behind her voice, as if SunnO)) or Boris were temporarily backing her up.

My only negative immediate reaction, which has already faded, is the somewhat drowning and excessive piano that occurs on the first three tracks of the record. 'Anecdotes', for which I've only heard the demo through a friend, has an incredible duet of piano and harp, but is mainly piano driven. I'm excited, however, that the record version will sound different. 'Sapokanikan' is all piano and celesta, and 'Leaving the City' has its epic harp throughout with matching piano.

It's now up on iTunes as well. So excited for this album ...

I can't get over how beautiful this is, totally feeling those drums

I've been trying to figure this out on piano.. it's written in a pretty uncommon musical mode called Aeolian mode, which is basically a major key that begins on the minor sixth (aka magical and atmospheric). I also just realised that there's a repeating interlocking pattern beneath the 'I believe in you, do you believe in me?' section- polyrhythms return !

I've been listening to this song so many times today. My initial reaction to it was feeling a little bit battered by the slightly abrupt marxophone (or - what instrument is it, actually?) but I realise now that had a lot to do with the quality of the rip - after its official release and a higher quality stream I find it much smoother and I'm loving the choices of instrumentation and arrangement.

I was pondering a little about the lyrics today
"In December of that year,
the word came down that she was here."

I read "she" as spring in light of the surrounding context but I find it sort of startling that spring should appear as early as December? This could be me not knowing much about the American climate. Any thoughts? Is "she" someone/thing else entirely?
I really enjoy the focus on seasons/weather/temperature in this song.

Also, there is one thing I cannot quite shake.. I've become quite used to the album vocal performance and like it (though I don't find it as striking as the live performance), but towards the very end of the song, the first time she sings 'beneath' I keep feeling that the note is slightly off or that she's not hitting it, of course I know she would never allow that if she didn't intend it so I find it really strange that I have this reaction and have concluded my ears are a bit slanted but am still wondering if anyone's noticed anything similar.

Loving this song so much right now :>

I'm really into this track today. I mentioned in the Goose Eggs thread that I thought there were references to infertility. And now I'm seeing it in other places on the album.

While the fields are plowed
toward what we are allowed...

The fields being plowed could be a sexual metaphor, with grain a common reference to fertility. The "what we are allowed" implies a fate out of the hands of the protagonists.

The bridle bends in idle hands
and slows our canter to a trot.
We mean to stop, in increments, but can't commit.
We post and sit, in impotence

I especially find this stanza evocative. Apparently genious.com describes "posting and sitting" as the positions a rider makes in motion with the horses body. This is again suggestive of sex, and especially when followed by the word "impotence" implies the infertility theme.

However, the preceding line suggests maybe less infertility than a lack of commitment or readiness to the idea of conceiving? The word increments makes me think of the way couples trying to conceive time their love making to correspond with ovulation. But the posting and sitting in impotence implies that rather than time things for success they're just barrelling forward and making love randomly regardless of whether the timing is "fertile" or not.

Does this make sense to anyone else, or am I crazy? I'm seeing this thread all over the place on this album now!

When I first heard the live version of this song and didn't understand most of the lyrics I associated it with Occupy Wall Street. She would have written it around 2011/12 and lived in New York at that time. The opening imagery of displacement and the lines about mastering incendentals bleaching a collar etc, and the high rent, made me think about economic inequality and the effects of the financial crisis on people losing their homes. Not sure if any of the other lines in the song relate though. I also wonder if the unrecorded and powerful hand she mentions in Sapokanikan refers to the "invisible hand" that Adam Smith uses as a metaphor for the capitalist marketplace?

Back before the studio version was out, this was the song that I was the least into out of the four Divers songs she previewed live. But lately, I'm really appreciating it more than the other three. I especially love her use of the Marxophone on the latter two slow verses.

Although I have no idea what its about I think the lyrics on this song may be the best on the album. Especially these following passages:

In December of that year,
the word came down that she was here.
The days grew shorter.
I was sure, if she came 'round,
I'd hold my ground. I'd endure.
But they'd alluded to a change
that came to pass,
and Spring, deranged,
weeping grass and sleepless,
broke herself upon my windowglass.

And I could barely breathe, for seeing
all the splintered light that leaked her fissures,
fleeing, launched in flight:
unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding,
bleached the night with dawn, deleting,

I generally get a sense that this is about changing seasons (and maybe death?) and a shift from night to day, but its hard to interpret without knowing who "she" and "they" are who are mentioned in the early half. Any ideas?

The part about Spring being deranged and sleepless makes me think about the drought in California and the way that they've barely experienced winter the past few years. Could this be a reference to climate change? Spring would be deranged and sleepless if she is forced to return or "wake up" before she has barely been gone.

The final passage about the splintered light is particularly beautiful. The language is intriguing, with the light "leaking her fissures" and describing daylight as "bleeding." I feel there is a story line going on here that needs to be unravelled but I don't even know where to start with this section! The alliteration, assonance and internal rhymes are gorgeous.

Yes, the text you quoted is my favourite lyrical part of the song as well! And it's precisely the part which I alluded to before, that there might be a hint of something I will not repeat here...

"She" in the first part could also be Spring; "they" could be impersonal.

The Arthur Streeton painting with the name Florry Walker in it, that she talks about in Sapokanikan, is also called Spring, I wonder if it's connected?