I wasn't very well the other day. And to cheer me up my housemates let me open one of my Christmas presents a bit early (I did protest, I know how Santa feels about these things, but they were so excited). Amazingly the gift I chose turned out to be the new Joanna Newsom album "Ys". Amazingly as just a few days earlier I bought tickets to see her live in January. Anyway, it's great stuff! "The Milk-Eyed Mender" is one of the best albums of the last few years as far as I'm concerned and the follow up doesn't disappoint! Any other Newsom fans out there in hippyland? Here are some cracking lyrics from the new disc: From "Emily" "And everything with wings is restless, aimless, drunk and dour, The butterflies and birds collide at hot, ungodly hours," That the meteorite is a source of the light, And the meteor's just what we see, And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire that propelled it to thee." From "Sawdust & Diamonds" "And the little white dove Made with love, made with love: Made with glue, and a glove, and some pliers. Swings a low sickle arc, From its perch in the dark, Settle down, settle down my desire." "And the moment I slept I was swept up in a terrible tremor Though no longer bereft, how I shook and I couldn't remember" ...Ahh...She's great Catch her at a major city within 200 miles of you! Sunday, January 14 Glasgow, Scotland City Halls (accompanied by the Northern Sinfonia) Monday, January 15 Manchester, UK Bridgewater Hall (accompanied by the Northern Sinfonia) Tuesday, January 16 Gateshead, UK The Sage Gateshead (accompanied by the Northern Sinfonia) Friday, January 19 London, UK Barbican (accompanied by the London Symphony Orchestra)
She's not for me. But glad you found her stuff uplifting. That's what music's for. I find her vocal style a wee bit contrived 'childish'. Perhaps people that can't sing will be copying her style, 'cause it's a style which kinda obscures the fact. Went to a gig the other night and a girl was on stage doing a version, but then a guy started in the same vein! Toooo much!
I love the lyrics in 'This Side Of The Blue' - I heard of her by googling the lyrics, when it appeared in a commercial a while back. Still haven't gotten around to listening to any more... not sure if it'd be my kind of thang. She puts me in mind of a young Tori Amos, for some reason.
A lot of reviewers say her voice is too childlike for them. It's been said so much that Joanna herself as answered such comments...She doesn't think so Nor do I really. I think if anything is childish it's the lyrics. And I don't mean that negitivley, child-like is probably a better word for it. The little stories she tells are so out-there and imaginative that you'd think only a kid could think of such crazy/beautiful things. The lyrics and the harp are the main selling points for me. As I say, crazy lyrics, and some pretty mad harp plucking too - it just works so well. And I just love her voice. Never heard anything like it to be honest - That's what I like in me music
Joanna Newsom - Inflammatory Writ "Oh, where is your inflammatory writ? Your text that would incite a light, "Be lit"? Our music deserving devotion unswerving - cry "Do I deserve her?" with unflagging fervor. Well, no you do not, if you cannot get over it. And what's it mean when suddenly we're spent? Tell me True. Ambition came and reared its head, and went. Far from you. Even mollusks have weddings, though solemn and leaden but you dirge for the dead, take no jam on your bread - just a supper of salt and a waltz through your empty bed. And all at once it came to me, and i wrote and hunched 'till four-thirty But that vestal light, it burns out with the night in spite of all the time that we spent on it: one bedraggled ghost of a sonnet! While outside, the wild boars root without bending a bough underfoot- O it breaks my heart; I don't know how they do't. So don't ask me. And as for my inflammatory writ? Well, I wrote it and I was not inflamed one bit. Advice from the master derailed that disaster; he said "Hand that pen over to me, poetaster!" While across the great plains, keening lovely & awful, ululate the last Great American Novels - An unlawful lot, left to stutter and freeze, floodlit. But at least they didn't run, to their undying credit." Brilliant, no?
Don't dig her vocal style but she at least deserves credit for original vision and artistic integrity unlike such talentless confections as Dido for instance... Anyone who gigs with a harp (and the talent to play it) deserves respect in my book.
