Joanna Newsom --- "Ys"
- Thread starter Ivan Polygon
- Start date
Bob Stanley is an interesting one. He has an approach to music very similar to our own, which is why you can get on with him. Rooted in record collecting, I can hear shades of Morricone and 60s girls groups in that tune.
His English Weather comp is great
woops
is not like other people
seems like the term indie has been pretty much debased by this point in the thread where folk music like Ys that's not indie at all comes under the same umbrella as all kinds of total shit. saint etienne likewise are not an indie band or sound in the slightest. the strokes or whatever shit 00s band you want to name are not indie either. although they are shit. they're new wave revival. in this thread indie means white
Post about what you like, for real, but other people might chose to highlight things you're not interested in, or take the conversation in a different direction. I'm not saying "anyone who listens to Joanna Newson is a racist" - would be tough for me, as I actually owned Ys for a bit (still might do), I'm just saying I know I bought it because of all the praise heaped on it in the music press of the time and that's a product of indie-ish stuff having that cultural hegemony.... and that's connected with whiteness.
I mean to me, race leaps off the page the moment I think about someone like Newson. Is that weird? It's literally one of the first things that occurs to me. Perhaps I'm so used to thinking about music in that racialised light, idk.
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x post sorry.
Yeah, it is weird, and she's a massive outlier in that field anyway due to her instrument choice.
Very odd when you think it originally referred to stuff like The Field Mice or similar shit.
woops
is not like other people
yes that's exactly what i mean. obviously i'm not going to get very far trying to convince people on here that there's a difference between mumfords and the guitar bands i like. might as well spam my list of 100 records yet again
shakahislop
Well-known member
Five minutes in, my main impression is that for some reason it reminds me of the kind of aesthetic that the rich girls in my school would have liked. Which is the same impression that I've had the other times I listened to it. I think it's the lyrics partly using kind of a fantastical vocabulary, that sounds a bit like a victorian book. And maybe that there's something about the structure of the songs, which reminds me of a musical. I'm not saying that you're a rich girl at my school suspended, just that I have an inbuilt gut reaction against anything these phantoms from years ago would be into.
Have to say perhaps the J train at 5am isn't exactly the intended environment for this kind of thing.
Have to say perhaps the J train at 5am isn't exactly the intended environment for this kind of thing.
shakahislop
Well-known member
She's not English is she? To me something about this album really sounds English.
shakahislop
Well-known member
She tends to come into my consciousness through the indie world, and good for her because there's a lot of money in getting to those kinds of ears, but I don't think this sounds like indie at all. It sounds more like Daniel Johnson or something 'outsider' like that. Can't think of a category it fits into except possibly it sounds a bit like 'early music', kind of medieval. I mean there's definitely something historical about her sound and her lyrics.
luka
Well-known member
If you're talking about music then the Laws of The Playground still hold
sus
Moderator
I understand that, or I understand it better now after you explaining it to me, and it makes sense. I think the sweeping generalization about black music not being allowed to transcend being pigeonholed as subculture is pushing it—speaking for America, black music has dominated the charts since the midcentury, and I can list hundreds of albums by black artists that are taken Very, Very Seriously as art, from Coltrane to Kanye.
Yes there will always be Karens screaming about profanity in rap. And I get the frustration of seeing one art form struggle while NME celebrates mediocrity. (Though remember, people who love, say, Animal Collective and Xiu Xiu and Dirty Projectors also think NME cover bands are trash.)
And I get DannyL's comment about seeing race in the economic machine that pushes for someone like Newsom. I mean, there's a lot more, we have talked about her family upthread, her blood is basically Cali Mafia. But hip-hop sells several orders of magnitude more than Joanna Fucking Newsom—just because fucking grime never mainstreamed doesn't mean the white people get this special ticket to record sales. Just look up the wealthiest musicians, they're almost all black, dude. That's not to say there isn't racism in the system; it's to say that the situation isnt like the cut and dry picture of privilege you present. The marginalization complex you're stirring up is too hysterical to be accurate or nuanced.
But the bigger point is I don't like listening to music, or experiencing art, as an extension of race or class warfare. Which is how it often feels here, cf Woops' comments on the board's use of "indie" as a descriptor for "white." (Which would be a bit more understandable if the board werent basically all white, but actually black music nerds give more a shit about white indie than y'all do.)
The point is, I think y'all are wasting your life seeing art through an antagonistic perspective. You could just as easily become obsessed with how Scandinavian music producers groped Kesha, and how terribly misogynistic the industry is. Imagine not being able to enjoy a movie because it was funded by Harvey Weinstein. The dude was evil and the dude gave money to a movie that he thought would make him money. That's it. Can we enjoy Samuel Jackson's performance in Pulp Fiction now, of is it hopelessly tainted?
I'm an ape on a spinning marble trying to feel something beautiful before the universe collapses into entropy. That's what it's always been, even for the "dirt poor kid in a black neighborhood" y'all are fetishing, who listens to grime or reggaeton or whatever. They didn't listen to music as fucking activism, they listened to it as life force. Privilege and inequality are real, and worth pushing up against. But at the end of the day, we are all equally doomed and insignificant, we all have narrow windows of experience before we become dust. And spending your time enacting race war over a some harp music—why? Solidarity is the only humane response among the doomed. If I found an angle by which to argue that Newsom was a disadvantaged underdog, would you finally fuck with Ys? And is it me missing the point here, or you?
Yes there will always be Karens screaming about profanity in rap. And I get the frustration of seeing one art form struggle while NME celebrates mediocrity. (Though remember, people who love, say, Animal Collective and Xiu Xiu and Dirty Projectors also think NME cover bands are trash.)
And I get DannyL's comment about seeing race in the economic machine that pushes for someone like Newsom. I mean, there's a lot more, we have talked about her family upthread, her blood is basically Cali Mafia. But hip-hop sells several orders of magnitude more than Joanna Fucking Newsom—just because fucking grime never mainstreamed doesn't mean the white people get this special ticket to record sales. Just look up the wealthiest musicians, they're almost all black, dude. That's not to say there isn't racism in the system; it's to say that the situation isnt like the cut and dry picture of privilege you present. The marginalization complex you're stirring up is too hysterical to be accurate or nuanced.
But the bigger point is I don't like listening to music, or experiencing art, as an extension of race or class warfare. Which is how it often feels here, cf Woops' comments on the board's use of "indie" as a descriptor for "white." (Which would be a bit more understandable if the board werent basically all white, but actually black music nerds give more a shit about white indie than y'all do.)
The point is, I think y'all are wasting your life seeing art through an antagonistic perspective. You could just as easily become obsessed with how Scandinavian music producers groped Kesha, and how terribly misogynistic the industry is. Imagine not being able to enjoy a movie because it was funded by Harvey Weinstein. The dude was evil and the dude gave money to a movie that he thought would make him money. That's it. Can we enjoy Samuel Jackson's performance in Pulp Fiction now, of is it hopelessly tainted?
I'm an ape on a spinning marble trying to feel something beautiful before the universe collapses into entropy. That's what it's always been, even for the "dirt poor kid in a black neighborhood" y'all are fetishing, who listens to grime or reggaeton or whatever. They didn't listen to music as fucking activism, they listened to it as life force. Privilege and inequality are real, and worth pushing up against. But at the end of the day, we are all equally doomed and insignificant, we all have narrow windows of experience before we become dust. And spending your time enacting race war over a some harp music—why? Solidarity is the only humane response among the doomed. If I found an angle by which to argue that Newsom was a disadvantaged underdog, would you finally fuck with Ys? And is it me missing the point here, or you?
sus
Moderator
And I stick to my guns that the aversion to someone like Newsom here and more broadly seems primarily identitarian and sociological. Those aren't quite the words I want but I don't have better ones. Mood affiliation, maybe. Having the right vibe, having the right dress demeanor posture attitude orientation to the world. All the comments against her have basically been like shakahslop's—too precious, like something rich boarding school girls would like. Too twee. Too whimsy. Smug and pretentious.
That doesn't mean you have to fuck with it. We all have a right to listen to the music that resonates with our own moods. But the reason people don't fuck with it feels more social and interpersonal than about the music itself. There is plenty of misogyny in these kinds of sociological critiques, both upthread and in general, like saying black music feels too "raw" or "urban" or "aggressive." And those angles have been conveniently ignored in favor of the racial angle by which Newsom is Dominant Hegemonic Culture to be resisted. When the reality is a buncha macho boys scared of liking a white girl playing harp and singing about goldfish!
That doesn't mean you have to fuck with it. We all have a right to listen to the music that resonates with our own moods. But the reason people don't fuck with it feels more social and interpersonal than about the music itself. There is plenty of misogyny in these kinds of sociological critiques, both upthread and in general, like saying black music feels too "raw" or "urban" or "aggressive." And those angles have been conveniently ignored in favor of the racial angle by which Newsom is Dominant Hegemonic Culture to be resisted. When the reality is a buncha macho boys scared of liking a white girl playing harp and singing about goldfish!
sus
Moderator
We are enacting a sociological battle that isn't ours, is what I'm trying to say, and perhaps we could be less sincere and fanatical dupes and proxies in that war, a bit more detached and self-aware of the contingency and partiality of our positions, perhaps reject the battle lines completely.
Murphy
cat malogen
think I’m up to about 353, poor time management but outstanding taste
anyway, enjoy the roasting squire
Yeah
Yeah. No one had to shimmy up on top of a tower block to broadcast Joanna Newson.
The indie purist strikes back! Hands off my Sarah records!
woops
is not like other people
another rousing post, suffice to say that the debate on authenticity has been had to death here and even moreso elsewhere and never reached any kind of conclusion. and i don't expect it to this time either. i think, though, or like to think, that if i post some music here it's because it sounds good and not as some broadside in a culture war.
fuck that, if you look at my legendary list there's hardly any jingle jangle twee stuff on there