Specs & Pricing

Music
Rock etc.
Recording
of the Issue
Joanna
Newsom: Ys.
Newsom and Van Dyke Parks,
producers. Drag City 303 (CD
and two-LP).
The harp has never enjoyed a large role
in popular music. But Joanna Newsom
has other ideas. On her sophomore
Ys (pronounced “ees”), they involve
arranger Van Dyke Parks, a 32-piece
orchestra, recording engineer Steve
Albini, and jack-of-all-trades Jim
O’Rourke. The rich results justify the
murderer’s row lineup of talent.
Newsom was reared by a family
steeped in the arts and at a young age, began folding South American, jazz, and pop
influences into a folk-hued playing technique. After issuing two EPs and attracting
interest after opening for acclaimed acts such as Cat Power and Will Oldham, she
landed with cutting-edge label Drag City. Released in 2004, Newsom’s The Milk-Eyed
Mender has become one of the three best-selling albums in the imprint’s history—no
small change given its roster.
While Newsom performed with minimal support on her debut, her latest album
comes with an ambitious instrumental base that includes strings, woodwinds, brass,
dulcimer, marimba, banjo, percussion, accordion, bass, and electric guitar. After laying
down the harp and vocal parts with Albini, she started collaborating with Parks, who
wanted final versions to which he could refer for precise arrangements. The decision
was necessitated as much by Newsom’s improvisational style as Parks’ perfectionist
view that every move she made would influence his score.
And Newsom makes plenty of motions throughout Ys, her whimsical voice treading
the line between small child and spirited princess. She rolls vowels, swishes words like
mouthfuls of wine, and pronounces syllables with an accent that belongs to an era
hundreds of years bygone—her fluttering timbre both majestic and impossibly pure.
Four of her five thoroughly original songs come in just under or well above ten-minute
lengths, the compositions fittingly suiting the 26-year-old’s capricious singing, the
tracks doubling as fairy tales, nursery rhymes, film narratives, and stream-of-conscious
poetry intended for mature audiences but which could just as easily be enjoyed by a
class of kindergartners.
“Emily” is Chaucerian in reach, an ode to nature that flows along on stately harp pops,
snaps, and picks, breaking occasionally for a bluegrass graze before frolicking back to
the river. Gentle plucking persuades the animal-based morality play “Monkey & Bear”
to dance, its conclusion teeming with pathos, sympathy, and mystery. On “Sawdust
& Diamonds,” the sole solo selection here, Newsom’s arpeggio runs lend a fragile
beauty, the harp conveying bass and rhythmic figures that feed a dramatic progression.
And though it begins pensively, “Only Skin” is the equivalent of a ball of twine being
unraveled by kittens. Smog’s Bill Callahan supplies a dry baritone background vocal, a
third-person narrator who trails the star-gazing harpist. The orchestra always follows
Newsom, too, its symphonic heft and presence at times suggesting Disneyesque magic,
a pushing and pulling force that brings a fantasy world to life.
Due to its complex elements, final production of the all-analog Ys called for
spreading 40 tracks over two synchronized 24-track tape machines at Abbey Road.
O’Rourke’s mix includes a few tweaks, the outcome focusing Newsom’s spontaneous
voice and harp dead-center, the rise-and-fall of the orchestration hovering all around
and achieving the shimmering presence the artist desired. The perspective isn’t totally
faithful to what one might hear on a straight-up classical album, but this isn’t that
kind of work. What’s presented is spectacularly detailed, nuanced, and intimate—the
harp’s resonance in full bloom thanks to an allegedly ingenious miking scheme by
Albini. Newsom’s controlled spontaneity, imaginative imagery, and bar-by-bar colorshifts
pour through. The two-LP set wasn’t available at deadline, but if the gorgeoussounding
disc—complete with gold-embossed liner-note pages—and Drag City’s past
efforts are any indication, it should be the optimum medium on which this brilliant
spectacle should be experienced. BG
Further Listening: Edith Frost: It’s A Game; Fairport Convention:
Unhalfbricking
152 December 2006 The Absolute Sound