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2:38pm July 24, 2014

Ys (Joanna Newsom)

feliscorvus:

I like Ys best of all Joanna Newsom’s albums. Her voice isn’t to everyone’s taste (I think it works for what she sings; my SO can’t stand it; YMMV). But this album is amazing and I love that she was brave enough to actually make it. There are only 5 songs on it but they’re LONG, one of them being over 16 minutes (link below; the song is ‘Only Skin’):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6UUe3Q54qFg

Scrape your knee: it is only skin.
Makes the sound of violins.

And they’re not just long, but big and lush and multi-layered and full of poetry and lyrical wordplay of the kind I actually really do like.

It’s not 100% clear what she’s getting at in all cases, but overall the album seems to be “about” the process of growing up and coming to terms with the enormity of the world and of life and death and everything in between.

When this album came out I remember she got a lot of flak for it being “pretentious”. For whatever reason, a lot of people seem to have the attitude that musicians can ONLY sing about very basic romantic/sexual themes and they aren’t allowed to use obscure (but beautiful) vocabulary or anything like that, because oh my goodness, that’d be pretentious. I have yet to figure out why this attitude exists, but my guess is that it’s like…when I was growing up and “nerd” wasn’t a compliment, people would call you a nerd when they perceived you as having way too much unrestrained enthusiasm for something. 

And Ys is unrestrained everything. And I love it for that.

I just listened to that one song and loved it completely.

But also I noticed something.

There’s two separate qualities to her voice.  One is the one that I can tell annoys some people.  But there’s another one, and I’ve heard it before, in the voices of neuro-atypical woman, and it makes me quite curious.  It’s an undertone, a behind-tone, and it’s not the same thing as the sound that bothers people.

Notes:
  1. imnotevilimjustwrittenthatway reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  2. facetowardsthewind reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  3. chamberlian reblogged this from feliscorvus
  4. dolls-n-lifeviews reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  5. fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton said: It startles me people would call her pretentious. It feels like, even if her lyrics are sort of wordy, that she speaks that way because it comes naturally to her.
  6. feliscorvus reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone and added:
    I don’t want to speculate too specifically about someone who is both real and currently alive, but having seen a couple...
  7. withasmoothroundstone reblogged this from feliscorvus and added:
    I just listened to that one song and loved it completely. But also I noticed something. There’s two separate qualities...
  8. clatterbane said: I will have to check that out. It does sound very interesting.