Joanna Newsom - Ys
|
List Price: Our Price: $13.99 You Save: $1.99 (12%) Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $7.00 (click here) Category: Music CD See more new music releases 
|
|---|
Buy this Music CD at online store in your country
Canadian Music Store
Canadian Music Store
Free Music Notes for Ys
Free Music Review: Stories from the Kingdom of Ys
Hit: 5 Stars
'Ys', the second album by the unique Joanna Newsom, presents itself like a bejeweled and alluring volume of fairytales. I have yet to find an album with packaging as visually stunning, or songs as epically orchestrated and written as the ones featured on this album. The album comes in a stunning slip-cover featuring a gorgeous painting by Benjamin A. Vierling filled with symbology and luxurious detail; On the back is the list of song titles (Emily, Monkey & Bear, Sawdust & Diamonds, Only Skin, and Cosmia). The jewel case is a mirror image of the slip-cover, except the album cover is instead presented like an old journal cover, complete with an illustration of a gold flower wreath, lyre, and sword. The gold edged booklet enclosed is thick and its layout similar to a novel, complete with title page and sprawling lyrics, a total of 29 pages in total. The songs are rich and long, the lyrics of the longest song (Only Skin) taking up 9 pages. Accompanied with the lyrics are old-fashioned black and white drawings of oceans, mountains, men wresting with bears, wispy ghosts, sunsets, and harps.
The music has evolved and matured since Joanna Newsom's debut album 'The Milk-Eyed Mender'. The songs unfold like epic fables, filled with clever twists, turns, and ingenious rhymes that echo like medieval hymns. Newsom's voice unsettles many because of its childlike, high-pitched tone, but once you get used to the exuberant squeals of excitement at the climax of a chorus, you can easily appreciate the whimsical elements that are perfectly suited for the exquisite lyrics and imagery. Newsom's harp playing is stunning in itself, and is accompanied with a full orchestra that includes electric bass, electric guitar, percussion, banjo, mandolin, accordion, marimba, cymbalum, violin, viola, cello, bass, clarinet, flute, oboe, bassoon, trumpet, and French horn. Newsom's sister Emily Newsom lends her voice for back-up in the song 'Emily', and Bill Callaham provides vocal harmonies in the song 'Only Skin'.
The lyrics are impeccably written, filled with images of meadowlarks, fires moving over prairies, meteorites, bears dripping of grime, and doves stuffed with "sawdust and diamonds."
All in all this is a moving musical work, filled with the beauty, fantasy, and whimsy that one is normally deprived of in life. It acts like an elixir for the soul, and leaves you hungry and wanting for more.
Free Music Review: Twain
Hit: 1 Stars
YS, to quote Mark Twain, is clearly "better than it sounds." I loved Milk Eyed Mender but when I listened to YS I cringed...how had someone so good become this unrecognizably overproduced?Free Music Review: Five Beautiful Epic Songs from Newsom
Hit: 5 Stars
I usually write reviews for movies but I've been listening to this disc since November and I have yet to get sick of it. I appreciate music as deeply as I do movies but I'm always a bit more apprehensive in asserting any strong opinions about music. To me it seems like a more subjective medium but I'm sure many will disagree. Anyway, Joanna Newsom is a harpist who sings epic folk songs with a voice as equally eclectic as Bjork's but more appropriately contained for her lyrics. The first few times I listened to this album I new immediately that these songs would take some getting used to. They are long and wordy but in time her lyrics come through and she has so much to say. I actually can't even believe Joanna Newsom is real. I'm almost tempted to say that she is some kind of collaboration of talent like some might say of William Shakespeare, but she's not. She is real and she is only in her mid-twenties. Newsom will never be a big star and she obviously doesn't care to be anyway. Her music, as I've described above, is not tailored for mainstream appeal and although the old punk in me might like her for that alone, I actually find her music massively appealing. You might too if you are open to appreciating music like this.
I'm not going to review every track individually because there is a lot to say. However, on an album with just five songs it is quite possible. The first song is probably the most appealing. It is a song called "Emily". It seems nostalgic and is about a loved one (I think her sister?) who chose a different path in life but a path Joanna seems encouraged to understand and appreciate. The only repeated lines, possibly even considered the chorus, are about the differences between a meteor, a meteorite, and a meteoroid. The astrophysics snob in me noticed she has the definitions wrong but perhaps as an outsider to her sister's chosen profession the oversight was intentional. A meteoroid is not the remnant after hitting the Earth, it is just a smaller asteroid already floating in space. Perhaps I'm a hemorrhoid for pointing that out? Regardless, the song is beautiful and says quite a bit in just over ten minutes. Like many of her songs it is bittersweet in some spots but overall absolutely beautiful.
My favorite song on the disc is "Only Skin". It is 17 minutes long but worth it entirely. It is a culmination of experiencing chaos and ruin but finding peace and strength in love through it all. Boy does that sound like a sappy and bombastic mouthful. I can't really put the song's meaning into one sentence of course but it is clearly about a strong relationship and any description I provide won't do her music justice anyway. Joanna's lyrics as a whole seem incredibly mature and are detailed enough that they must be profoundly personal. Her voice in "Only Skin" sounds amazing and the song's climax is in its own way explosive. It is a great piece of music.
Evidently, Newsom has quite a bit of credibility within her genre/sub-genre/indie folk scene. I'm not sure a label can be placed on her style of music. I don't want to call it experimental because it doesn't seem intentionally so, even though it does mix styles in a way I've never heard before. Her music comes off very natural and that is why it is, at least to my ears, as if she he has come from another planet. Like I said earlier, it is unconventional but in the long run it is quite possible that her music consume any listener. I highly recommend not only this album, but in general discovering this artist.
Free Music Review: Something special...friends and family may differ
Hit: 5 Stars
I first learned of Newsom reading an article about her on the NY Times web site. There was a link to the complete song "Emily" and once I heard it, I knew that I stumbled on something new and unique...this is probably the most meaningful artist I have encountered since Sigur Ros.
"Ys" is just amazing - the lyrics, orchestration, her voice. But this is not for the faint-of-heart, nor for someone seeking the conventional. Nearly all friends and family who have heard this album absolutely cannot stand it. I mean, they want it turned off - immediately...so buyer beware...
If this is your cup of tea, you are in for a real treat.
Free Music Review: Newsom Changes Her Pace
Hit: 5 Stars
I adore Joanna Newsom's first CD, The Milk-Eyed Mender, for three things: Newsom's childlike, caterwauling, but immediately arresting and charismatic voice; her strong harp melodies; and her witty lyrics. For her second album, Ys, Newsom improved her vocal technique just enough to eliminate her distinctiveness; drowned out her harp in lush orchestration; and moved on from three or four minute songs to epic allegories more poetic than lyrical. In other words, she cut out of this second album everything I loved about her first. The amazing thing is that very different sophomore album is at least as good as Newsom's first, but for entirely different reasons.
Ys is, first and foremost, about Newsom's lyrics. Leaving verse-chorus-verse far behind, she brings us five songs ranging in length from seven minutes to seventeen with recurring motifs rather than repetitious choruses. Her intricate rhyme schemes rival modern rap and her stories and their subjects range widely and are told inventively - especially Monkey & Bear, an allegory of a pimp-prostitute kind of relationship about a monkey who takes advantage of the talents of a dancing bear. Orchestral music is the best choice for lyrics this weighty yet far-out, and the childlike delivery Newsom' used in her last album as a kind of deceptive, even self-deprecating, counterpoint to the complex lyrics, could not sustain the additional weight the heavier, lengthier poetry of Ys. Newsom was correct in her risky decision to make over her style entirely for this album.
Ys is more challenging, less immediately catchy, than The Milk-Eyed Mender. But it is complex, deep, fascinating, and well worth multiple listens. Newsom shifts gears well. I hope that over the years, we get more of the Milk-Eyed Mender Newsom and more of the Ys Newsom; and if she can consistently reinvent herself this successfully, I also can't wait to see what other surprises she has in store for us.