An introduction to Joanna Newsom.

In all fairness you should know first that I am in love with Joanna. I would do anything for the chance to give my life to save hers, except going so far as to endanger her life just so i can save her... it has to be real to count. I first heard her while i was in Urban Waves, i went to the girl who was working, and she told me the name. I forgot by the time i was home. I went back every day until the same girl was once again working, and she once again gave me the name. This time i wrote it down.

This was roughly October two thousand and five, and i went for what was almost six months listening to her every morning when i woke up. Often to the annoyance of my room mates. For as much as i love her, many people find her to be rather hard to appreciate. The complaint, on her first album especially, is that she sounds like a child. This is something that i have little issue looking past, having always been a fan of people with strange voices. However Out side of those people who simply cannot look past her voice, i do not believe i have heard a word of negativity about her, given you give her the chance.

She has been playing the harp since she was wee little girl, but has only been singing for the last two or three years. As a child she went to a school where they would throw javelins, recite translated German poetry about fairy's and witches, as well as various other alternative learning activities. Later she went to a school for new age composition, which she sort of regrets, wishing now she had gone to a more traditional music school. It becomes painfully clear after listening to just a sample of her work that this kind of education turned her into a very strange kind of flower.

Her first album, The Milk Eyed Mender, is a collection of music she had released on two previous self released albums, (Walnuts and Whales, Yarn and Glue) along with a few new additions. Most of the tracks consist of just her and her harp, with a few piano numbers, and one with a harpsichord i believe. Her songs have no course, very little repetition, and often tell a winding fairy tale from some far away place. It was her words that spoke to me. Touched me, moved me in a way no female vocalist had ever managed before, her stories cryptic yet so sincere. I was hooked for life.

Last November she released her second studio album, Ys, fifty five minutes long, and brilliant. The album chronicles a year of her life, with four songs describing major events through out the year, and one sort of bring it all together. The album features a full orchestra on four of the tracks, with arrangements by Van Dyke Parks. If her last album told fairy tales, this album tells epics, with the shortest song weighing in at just under eight minutes, she continues to raise the bar on the expectations she has for her fans. She started to repeat herself, but only once in a while, which gives the words an added weight. It took me a good three months before i was able to understand the why behind the album, listening to every word she says for as much as fifteen minutes is a challenge, even for a devotee such as myself. A picture started to form, as i drew closer and closer to the why. Why she had to write about this year in her life. Why it needed to be done. When i finally understood, it broke me, moving me to tears, something no other recording artist had managed to do. and even since then i have found myself in tears listening to her. It is still breaking my heart every time.

I have never had to work so hard listening to anything before. The fun of the first album was half in figuring out what she was trying to say with her side ways hintings at larger pictures or abstract notions, delusions. So on. The same can be said of Ys, the keys to the album lay hidden in plain sight, if you read the lyrics enough times, i am sure that you would be able to figure it out. Either way, you really should try to give her a chance.

Do it.

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Uehen

Life is a lost opportunity. Think of all the things your parents could have done.