Joanna Newsom --- "Ys"

[shudder]

Before this thread turned into a stalemate pitched battle there were several posts about what people liked about Ys. Also as shudder says, reynolds, woebot, simon sliverdollar and many others have all talked about why they like it. Me, I like long, weird, beautiful songs. Kinda like why i like current minimal techno. hahahahahaha, joanna newsom - monkey & bear (villalobos' bear-playing-congos-falling-down-stairs remix)! Hipster heads around the world would explode.

ha! that would be... wow... I might have to try...

as for one thing I like (there are many, and I can't really put it all together in any good way), the pentatony in "Only Skin" is gorgeous, and she has these little vocal flutters (micro vibrati) at the top of each little pentatonic run...

 

[nomadologist]

ok. that's basically what I assumed people liked about it. i don't like any of those aspects of it. especially not the elements that warrant a bjork comparison. just curious. i find it interesting that while people who hate it have no problems articulating why, people who love it (i'm mostly talking published journalists here) don't have much to say about its merits beyond the fact that it has obvious excesses that are worth forgiving.

PS i don't particularly care which "authority figures" like it, or which magazines have reviewed the album favorably. to my ears, it is at best pastoral folk and nothing special, at worst like fingernails on chalkboard. of course, this is not to say i give a shit whether anyone else likes it. but to write music as contrived and precious as newsom's one must have some idea the sort of fire and brimstone that will rain down on them as hurled by fans of darker, electronic, less earthy or folksy music. it's basically written TO elicit that reaction, from the looks of that interview.

PPS I also hate "orchestration" because it always sounds cheap and wrong to me, like most uses of classical instrumentation in rock/pop.

 

[turtles]

this is not to say i give a shit whether anyone else likes it. but to write music as contrived and precious as newsom's one must have some idea the sort of fire and brimstone that will rain down on them as hurled by fans of darker, electronic, less earthy or folksy music. it's basically written TO elicit that reaction, from the looks of that interview..

See that's the thing, is that i AM a fan of "darker, electronic, less earthy" music. Definitely the majority of my music listening time is spent with some sort of house or techno. And yet Ys was one of the few pieces to come from the indie side of things in the last year that I genuinely enjoyed. Okay, so I probably don't represent the average newsom fan, but still i think there's something about the sonic palette that she uses, the elaborateness of it all, and the way the pieces fit very oddly together, that elicits the same kind of pleasure i get from listening to some super long, intricate track by villalobos or luciano. Even though it's also the very opposite of "minimal" or electronic. I guess I'm trying to say there's more than one way to enjoy this album, and not every way involves glorifying newsom as some sort of devine wood nymph...

 

[nomadologist]

yeah but i just put on cosmia (quietly cuz i'm at work) again to see if i'm being too harsh, and that yelping she uses at the end of her vocal phrasing just wipes out any sympathy i feel for her style --the way she intones/inflects UPWARD for no reason so often, which doesn't seem to be conveying anything but LISTEN TO THIS IMPORTANT PART and doesn't seem to be adding anything harmonically to the song. all the vocal gymnastics just detract from the pretty melodic instrumental interludes. there's so much meandering that it does just seem to be rambling after a while. i don't think her songs are structurally complex--i think they're structureless. i love formless, amorphous music a lot, but when you're trying to make (american) folk, which generally takes linear sort of melodic verse-chorus-verse form, it seems odd to rely solely on swelling "orchestration" to set pace. she seems to want the vocals to be the emotional core of the music, but the instruments are the only element with forward momentum. she lurches. sometimes she doesn't sing pitches, either, and i'm not hearing real microvibrato, though i may have to listen louder for that.

 

[turtles]

ha! the fact that we got you to listen to this again I will consider a small victory

But really, those are all fair points. I think it's pretty much agreed even by people that like her that her voice is an acquired taste and may not be for everyone. the whole album's like a really strong, stinky cheese or something, if your tastebuds fall even slightly outside its range, it'll taste terrible. But for whatever reason i think its very tasty. As i said, i like how the her voice, the orchestration, the harp playing, all seem to have different ideas about what they should be doing. i guess it's fairly reasonable to want them to get into agreement, but i don't really want them too

 

[shudder]

hehe.. I'm not sure what "real" microvibrato is, since I thought I had made up the term going back to the record, the vibrato touches that I remember are bigger than I had remembered, e.g. 6:47 in "Only Skin". I still love it, though.

A couple of other points.

1. I mentioned Simons SDC and Reynolds not b/c they were "authority figures", but because neither of them (as far as I know) are hugely inclined to this sort of thing in general, despite both having fairly catholic tastes. FWIW, they're definitely overall both on the more "darker, electronic, less earthy" side of things. And you could add the bot of woe to that list too, I suppose.

2. I don't think "at best pastoral folk" quite fits it. Pastoral, yes, folk, clearly, but there's more. Perhaps the orchestration is tripping you up... You said you didn't like it in general, since it sounds cheap and wrong to you. Fair enough in general, but I really think this orchestration is unlike almost any other orchestration on a pop record (except of course Van Dyke Parks' other work). On "Emily", it's all lurching and hopping behind the harp and voice, creating a really interesting rhythmic interplay. This is anything but ordinary, slapped on bad pop orchestration. I think the orchestration adds a whole 'nother layer to the pastoral folk already stretched to the breaking point by the song structures (do I just mean length? maybe).

3. As for the bjork comparisons, they of course appeal to me since I am a big fan. I actually think that there are only a few moments of similarity the Newsom's voice to bjork's. I find some of the more intricate harpwork reminds me a little of Zeena Parkins' playing on Vespertine, which I liked a lot.

 

[shudder]

oh, and I agree with every turtles just said. Her voice is very much personal taste area. same thing with the not-quite-synching-up of all the elements.

 

[nomadologist]

well, i was taking microvibrato to mean what i intuited you meant by it, which i thought would be superfast vocal vascillations between microtones rather than pitches.

you know what i think it might be that separates people here: shudder mentioned "rhythm" and the notion that rhythm can exist as some kind of interplay between orchestration and vocals and harp. this seems like a description of rhythm by someone who doesn't in general like to dance at all. do the newsom fans here dance at all? because i wouldn't classify those things as rhythm, or at least, i wouldn't count the lack/absence of compelling rhthym as something that can comprise rhythm. it seems very unsexy her music.

i think she executes her concept well, but like tht implied earlier, it's the concept that's severely unappealing to me. i don't like any kind of music that plays with "americana" imagery (heh except suicide)

 

[Leo]

with all the hype it's received, i felt like i should be open-minded about this album but it never clicked and i gave up when i realized i was forcing myself to give it a chance at the expense of playing things i DID like and DID want to hear. crazy. and honestly, i think i was tainted against it from the start simply because so many people were pre-sold by the van dyke parks/jim o'rourke connection. so many cool elements, it must be good!

 

[nomadologist]

ha, this review on amazon was funny:

My Medieval Zelda Princess!, January 7, 2007
Reviewer: Bodega Noriega (Brooklyn) - See all my reviews
Sometimes I feel like I'm not part of this era and this album takes me to a better time. Back when things were magical and people used words like "thicket" and "pumpernickel". And can you believe she wrote this whole thing herself! WTF! Wow I like how the songs just almost drift away like a dream right before a majestic violin reinforces her melody, as if she needed it anyway! Everytime I her Joanna's voice i feel like I'm being protected by a mystical wood nymph that is fluttering around my ears. People often wonder where can one listen to such a mythical expirience, and I always tell them to meet me at the Renaissance Fair!


if i didn't know better, i'd think i wrote that. i would've had i thought of it sooner.

 

[turtles]

HAHAHAHA oh wow that review, that is priceless...i wish those bastards would just shut up, it makes defending this album a lot harder. Though I should perhaps admit that i used to read a fair amount of fantasy as a young nerd (and still do occasionally) and to be honest there is a part of YS that appeals to the part of me that secretly still wishes he was living in big castle with a moat. But that's not the only reason I like it, honest!!

As for rhythm, I'm not sure it's entirely fair to call what your describing "rhythm" nomad, but i'm not sure entirely what else to call it. Either way, does all rhythm have to be for dancing? I do enjoying going out and dancing, but I also enjoy non-dance rhythms/music as well...

 

[nomadologist]

not all rhthym has to be for dancing. i prefer them that way though. with exceptions, of course. i just feel like newsom typifies "whiteness" as a condition or state of being. heh. w/r/t dancing of course.

 

[shudder]

newsom as personifying whiteness w/r/t dancing is, yes, spot on.

FWIW, I like dancing and dance music a lot, but I must admit that I'm a relative neophyte when it comes to dance music genres (how many north americans aren't? not many). In fact, like many north american music lovahs, I (in high school) used to look down on dance music in all the predictable, Radiohead-glorifying ways. ugh. AND I grew up on classical music, so my sense of rhythm might be a little different. (which isn't to say that rhythm isn't important in classical music of course!)

oh, and the amazon review is BRUTAL. are you sure you didn't write it? Interpreting Newsom as only faerie queen/enchanted princess is a big pet peeve of zoilus/Carl Wilson. Dig around his site a bit. I think he has some good defenses of her first album along those lines.

 

[mms]

i heard this today and i've got to say it's quite good.
It's admirable for it's ambition and singular imagination at least, it's quite lovely to listen to with some rather nice musical influenced songwriting and arrangements which is something the grizzly bear album had too. But it sounds contemporary rather than retro, or even folky particulary to my ears.

Lyrically it's not quite as good as it thinks it is.
The way she twitters on about god knows what reminds me a bit of my mum when she calls up and chats away about what she's done recently etc, but posher and featuring horses and not tescos or the hospital or whatever.

it actually reminds me of the om album too, same singlemindedness, same mystical lyrics and the same riffing on a few elements.


As for the piskie lady stuff, i really prefer that than an awful lot of things, i'd do anything to not hear just jack, jamie t, lily allen or any of those reali-e twarts.

 

[Mr. Tea]

Lyrically it's not quite as good as it thinks it is.
The way she twitters on about god knows what reminds me a bit of my mum when she calls up and chats away about what she's done recently etc, but posher and featuring horses and not tescos or the hospital or whatever.

it actually reminds me of the om album too, same singlemindedness, same mystical lyrics and the same riffing on a few elements.


As for the piskie lady stuff, i really prefer that than an awful lot of things, i'd do anything to not hear just jack, jamie t, lily allen or any of those reali-e twarts.

Ahaha, see my post on the first page of the 'Rock music - let's be honest' thread.

*Misty Mountain hops*

 

[nomadologist]

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/?last_story=/ent/video_dog/politics/2007/02/02/newsom/

ms. newsom's uncle

 

[tate]

http://www.salon.com/ent/video_dog/?last_story=/ent/video_dog/politics/2007/02/02/newsom/

ms. newsom's uncle

And your point is?

How about mentioning the rather memorable fact that Gavin Newsom was the first mayor in US history, on February 12, 2004, to legalize gay and lesbian marriage in the city over which he presided, and by doing so set off a firestorm throughout the country and helped to move the legal situation one step closer to something approximating humane equality for same sex partners.

 

[tht]

And your point is?

How about mentioning the rather memorable fact that Gavin Newsom was the first mayor in US history, on February 12, 2004, to legalize gay and lesbian marriage in the city over which he presided, and by doing so set off a firestorm throughout the country and helped to move the legal situation one step closer to something approximating humane equality for same sex partners.

And your point is?

 

[MankyFiver]

wow! this thread is still going!
well i aint heard the new one, the old one i found lovely for the first track and then her voice made me feel queasy

but then again i preferred the cocorosie lp, much to the horror of friends

 

[zhao]

I'm sure this has been mentioned before but she sounds like bjork. sometimes. a little.