Joanna Newsom - Ys
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Music CD Cover Artist: Joanna Newsom Edition: Music CD CD Release Date: 2006-11-14 Music Label: Drag City Soundtracks:
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Free Music Notes for Ys Album
Free Music Review: New Newsom
Hit: 5 Stars
Perhaps the first thing one notices upon a first listen to _Ys_ is how Joanna Newsom has moderated her voice, eschewing the crone like wail prevalent on much of _The Milk Eyed Mender_ in favour of a more subdued, dreamlike approach, only flying off the handle like old at moments of high drama or release of tension in the musical ebb and flow. At first glance, such an approach to this album sounds downright revelatory from Newsom, as her first album was brimming with enough melodic sophistication and quirky charm to promise a devastating commercial success if her voice had more mainstream appeal and her avant-garde, `difficult' tendencies were reigned in.
Followers of the esoteric side of music can rejoice then, even while some bank accounts fail to overflow, for although she has reigned in the voice (displaying a more mature and emotive sound which is actually very welcome), Newsom has thrown the songwriting rulebook out the window in almost every sense here: structurally daring and willfully difficult, even obscure in places, this new record is composed of only five tracks, the longest of which clocks in at a gargantuan 16 minutes, embraces off kilter melodies completely, and features an orchestral backdrop to 4 of the 5 songs, underpinning Joanna and her harp. Whew!
Despite this probably sounding like the negation of all that is true and pure to some, the great strength of Ys is that the daring, ambitious factors in the construction and delivery actually never get in the way of the primal, utterly entrancing magic of the musical content. `Emily' appears out of nowhere, the gentle ebb and flow of Newsom's voice and retrained orchestration giving way to her most beautiful melody (`The meteorite is the source of the light/the meteors just what we see.....') all the while retaining a rippling, hypnotic charm bordering on the mystical, before the main melody returns for the spectacular conclusion.
Even such a grand departure as this hardly prepares the ground for `Monkey and Bear', which sounds like a Russian waltz channeled through an eclectic folk tale- it is deceptively tuneful, gorgeously paced and almost entirely demented. `Only Skin' functions as an album centrepiece, showcasing most of the ideas apparent on the rest of the CD. It mixes orchestration and delightful melodies, multi-tracked vocals and obscure lyrics so gracefully, one barely notices the segmented nature of the piece, with each section seeming to flow from the one preceding and the mighty conclusion drawing all the strands together with aplomb.
This album will certainly have its detractors, as is almost always the case when something so envelope pushing comes along. I think it is a masterpiece, the extension of Newsoms musical vision and bizzare world-view only gaining from the radically altered format. She actually touches on many genres - folk, indie, experimental, even pop- and mixes all her influences to such effect that this record sounds like very little, or even nothing else. Nevertheless, it is entirely convincing, so crystalline, approachable, dense and delicate that embracing it is like penetrating some enchanted realm. I'd imagine this is the kind of emotional response she intended in making this record. One can only wonder, after two records of such easy quality, what she will attempt next.