Following Joanna Newsom’s epic 2004 debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender, the freak-folk icon garnered a reputation for an eccentric singing voice. Though she has been compared to similarly unique female vocalists like Björk and Tori Amos, Newsom’s strength as a musician exists not merely in her unusual voice but in her powerful songwriting and storytelling. When tracks from her newest project started leaking onto the Internet as live downloads, Newsom fans knew something monumental was in the works. The completed work, Ys, orchestrated by Van Dyke Parks, proves even more experimental than her first album, as Ys features only five songs, ranging from seven minutes to seventeen minutes.
The first track, “Emily,” begins with sparse, mild harp plucking. The twelve-minute song maintains a unifying melody throughout, departing into beautiful orchestration and imaginative storytelling. The last minute and a half of the song show Newsom at her strongest, unafraid to attempt ambitious vocal melodies as she sings about the all-important media, a faction she generally ignores. Newsom’s most idiosyncratic track, “Monkey & Bear,” though definitely original, suffers musically and is the weakest track on the otherwise stellar album. “Sawdust & Diamonds,” a wonderful piece of songwriting, has some of the album’s strongest lyrics. “And in a moment of almost unbearable vision / doubled-over with the hunger of lions,” sings Newsom, and these lyrics seem to truly embody the intensity of Newsom’s vision.
“Only Skin,” clocking in at nearly seventeen minutes, is not for the casual pop fan. However, for those able to stomach more experimental mediums, this song may prove to be one of the more influential musical works of this generation. At about six minutes into the song, Newsom departs into the download earlier released as “Be A Woman.” This is some of the strongest material Newsom has ever written, a starkly, powerfully beautiful Oriental song with formidable vocal work by Newsom.
The album’s closer, “Cosmia,” is also the album’s shortest song, at just over seven minutes. The song begins with standard Newsom harp work. But as the sound grows, the emotion grows as well, and the orchestral climax of the song is enough to bring shivers to the most jaded music fan. Newsom’s vibrato, though not everyone’s cup of tea, is an intensely powerful instrument in its own right.
Ys isn’t the easiest album to get through, and probably won’t be receiving much radio play because of its lack of a three-minute pop song. But the open-minded music fan that decides to invest some time in Ys will witness the original vision one of the most distinct musical voices of this generation.
