Joanna Newsom - Ys

Drag City
Released: 11.14.06

With her new record, Joanna Newsom has expanded how she as a songwriter works. While her 2004 breakthrough Milk Eyed Mender was a brilliant 12 song folk/pop record that happened to be written and performed with a harp, Ys is an exponentially more ambitious, 5 song, 55 minute emprise. Her simple harp and vocal presentation has gained a cohort in the form of a full orchestra (even including banjo and accordion) conducted by Van Dyke Parks (Beach Boys, various TV and film scores). The orchestral elements augment the intense nature of Ys, allowing the songs to continually take a variety of forms, whether they are solemn, hyper, violent, etc. For instance, on the nearly 17 minute “Only Skin,” the string and brass backing builds with the hectic drama of Newsom’s harp, making it both anxious and fun. It steers this epic lyrical creation (199 unrepeated lines!) away from becoming tedious and instead affords it the title of unforgettable.

And then there’s Newsom’s voice, a tool so far beyond even astonishing that its force calls to mind unspeakable images of beauty and brutality rather than cheap musical comparisons. On Ys, like Milk Eyed Mender, every sharp pronunciation and each unorthodox stanza spits and kisses with styled confidence. Furthermore, her lyrics themselves are fantastical tales of people, animals, and places we might not understand, but the fashion in which the words bounce off of each other, with clever and emotive agility, is reminiscent of nothing before it.

For an album of only 5 songs, there are countless highlights, none the least of which is “Sawdust and Diamonds.” This is the lone track Newsom performs without Van Dyke’s arrangements, articulating only with her harp strokes and magnetic delivery. It’s the type of song that anyone anywhere can hear and feel something deeply personal. As she sings “I will swallow your sadness, and eat your cold clay, just to lift your long face,” the morrow in our bones boils; our guts shake. Yes, it is perfect because nothing else is this original, charming, or affecting.

There are not enough superlatives in the world to describe Joanna Newsom and Ys. Still, this is the greatest album of 2006, by our finest, most talented modern songwriter. That should be enough.

-Kent Thompson