Joanna Newsom - Ys

So I decided to post that classical bit, for the first time in a long time, and I only briefly researched what the Debussy piece, The Sunken Cathedral, meant. That’s where I found the picture I used, which is the Wikipedia image for Ys. Basically, it’s a myth where a cathedral is sunk underwater, near the island of Ys (a mythicaly city that was swallowed by the ocean) and it just so happens that Joanna Newsom (who I’ve written about three times already but never about this album) made an album in 2006 titled, Ys. In turn, this is an equally, amazingly classical slice of life, in it of itself.

 

I knew nothing of this woman until the winter of 2006 when this remarkable album came out.* Some kind of fusion of classical music, by way of Newsom’s tremendous harp skill and the way she blends it with the orchestrations Van Dyke Parks (the guy who helped Brian Wilson write the lyrics to the majority of Smile [i.e. The Smile Sessions/SMiLE]) has crafted, it’s one magical dream of truly classical music. There are clarinets, flutes, plenty of strings; they all flourish together and her harp acts as the meter to it all, while her voice? Her voice is a mixture of far too many to even do it justice. Needless to say, it’s certainly an instrument all its own: it bounces from measure to measure, she reaches through octaves rather easily and wondering “how it could possibly go with anything else but the beautiful compositions that are happening around her?” it makes Ys something truly exceptional. All of this happens on “Monkey & Bear” and "Cosmia," 40% of the entire music here:  the way the dynamics really measure up to each other – the dipping fortes, the delicate pianos, the way her voice is always the star of the show – and on top of this, still to behold, are these richly decorated stories that she’s telling. 

As insincere as it seems, there are still moments of clarity on Ys, where everything is so crystal clear the mind is left to just get lost – in utter awe of what a creative mind is capable of: multifaceted stories, moving and gripping music, encompassing themes of life and adventure, the uniquely stellar quality of a blisteringly gorgeous voice – and knowing how to present it. It was the true depiction of what a bold artist is supposed to create in music: BOOM, here’s my album, in full-glory and it’s perfect, all myriad of sounds inside. It’s five songs long, but a hearty fifty-five minutes of substantially expansive music. Yeah fifty five minutes of bliss – it sounds so nice on headphones, with the vinyl, as loud as possible: you can hear her voice quiver as she breathes, the voice is simply amplified and it shrieks so sweetly – if that makes sense.There’s times where the harp is just chugging along, while the wind instruments bellow behind her, as a drum pounds away, and her voice is recounting this story of the old times – that there’s justice in taking it all in with a book of the lyrics.

*I just remember in early December looking for the newest music and I was reading comments about how the newfound critics were gushing about this new album by Newsom. The cover was shocking sure, it’s easily one of the best in retrospect. And for some reason, people seemed conflicted as to whether they purely loved it or confusingly despised it. That was enough for me to check it out, in entirety, and mind blown is lame for sure but it still sounds fitting when it comes to this album. (I think back in 2006 I was so head over heels for BH&R that this one still maybe wasn’t the top choice (pretty sure it was 2 w/ a bullet) it might still be there now in retrospect, maybe tied for the top. Who knows, for now just classical bliss in the new  age (i.e. six/seven years old).) – Bryan