I downloaded this album not only illegally, but long before its release date (November 14th, 2006). It was leaked accidentally by none other than the tastemaking Pitchfork and loosed on the world wide web.
Here in the hospital, I have few options as to how to spend my time. Most of it is lost to the internet, and much of the internet time is spent downloading free music. I download enough music to fill a DVD-R, then burn it off and delete it from the laptop. Most of it I don’t even get to listen to before it’s wiped away, stockpiled for a forthcoming period of restricted spending.
Joanna Newsom’s forthcoming effort, Ys (pronounced “wise,” I imagine), is the only album I save on the computer. Nearly 80 gigs of music have come and gone, and Joanna remains. She is a classically-trained harpist whose voice registers on the irritation scale somewhere between Bjork and Lisa Simpson. She lives in San Francisco, but you can’t hear anything other than Olde English on her sophomore effort. So, her accessibility is limited to those who are patient and open-minded. Her popularity, however, shows that people are willing to meet her halfway.
Ys is five tracks of fantastic, untimely folk music. In addition to Newsom’s harp, orchestration composed by folk elder statesman Van Dyke Parks fills out this disc with a strange mood previously unknown outside of Disney soundtracks. Songs like “Monkey & Bear” and “Sawdust & Diamonds” are straight out of a Renaissance Faire, while the 12-minute opener, “Emily” is a poetic, epic diary entry about birds and stars. You can look for Ys to be included in the year’s top 10 list in any decent music publication.
-George Viebranz
Posted under Hometown
This post was written by Denny on October 17, 2006
