New Joanna Newsom Album "Ys" Due Nov 14

FAUX avant-garde music judged self-indulgent in mainstream publication film at 11

Ithangyew.

If you don't like it, that's fine - I didn't get the memo that says everybody has to like Joanna Newsom, and I'm assuming you didn't either. But applying "meandering" to Ys, the reviewer might as well have said "too many notes" or "I couldn't be arsed to pay attention."

Call it whatever you want, uncommercial, complex, challenging, avant-garde, faux-fairy-wrangling, indie-fuX0r-suX0r-shitbath. But it's not the product of a lack of focus or discipline, and it's not an album that's easily appreciated after a few cursory listens.

In 1994, the RZA was avant-garde - in my book it's got fuckall to do with snobbery and everything to do with innovation.

If you think this records is as easy to market as Britney Spears FINE.

If you think releasing a somewhat less instant & digestible (than her debut) song-suite where every track is around the 10 min+ mark, and is best heard whole is typical Top 40 behaviour...

If you think her voice is in any way "average" and an easy pitch to new listeners...

What is your problem with calling this somewhat "uncommercial"?

avant-garde is a catch-all term for people who are doing shit nobody else is doing. This, ok, I'm fine with I suppose. I'm not a semantics nazi. I just don't want her to get a snobby audience, which is the danger when slapping that term onto her stuff.

Because it's not, by definition. Also, it's an ambiguous term that tells you nothing about the quality of the music, as describing music in terms of its marketability is quite beside the point.

Never said it was as easy to market as anything, but the moment something is put out to be sold, it's commercial (in whatever degree) by nature.

And Tim Ellison, it's quite influenced by Kora playing. You should listen to a CD called "Kora Melodies From The Republic of The Gambia, West Africa" by Alhaji Bai Konte.

Ah, it's just a blunderbuss of vitriol, feel free to ignore me. If reviewers are going to dismiss the album on grounds that it's meandering, it's a sign they haven't taken the time to digest it. Perhaps "avant-garde" was the wrong (loaded) term to use, but it takes a while to digest what she's doing here - that's just a fact, not snobbery.

There's also this anti-intellectual mode people slip into that gets me super-defensive - e.g. "I read Joyce's Ulysses, anybody could write that crap, the emperor's got no clothes, blah, blah." Okay, how about respecting the fact that people experience a depth in the work that you're not getting to? You don't have to appreciate it and you don't have to work to appreciate it, but some things are complex. There's plenty of music/art/literature I don't "get" but I don't blame the artist (or pretentious fans - yeah they're irritating but what does that have to do with anything?) for my own inability to get it. Momma had a name for people who trash what they can't understand - ignorant. Was she right, or just on some snobbery trip? (P.S. this has nothing to do with you personally, I'm just on a roll now....)

Regardless of all that, I guess what I'm saying is I'm not sure that Rolling Stone is the approriate bellweather of whether this album is any good or not.

There are odd time signatures that are peculiar to African Kora players, as she notes in this interview:

“I’ve spent time with figures transposed from the [African] Kora, where the right hand plays a four beat and the left plays a three, and in between where the two meters cross there is a really strange disorientation and disjunction that immediately upon hearing
I wanted to experiment more with...four against seven, four against nine, just playing with different spots rhythmically.”

Her downplaying it is a bit like The Rolling Stones downplaying the influence of the blues. But I understand her point, she has synthesized a bunch of different traditions and stressing the African influence is not completely accurate. She's not doing world music, aping some other culture's genre. But when you listen to "Bridges and Balloons" and then listen to something like Toumani Diabaté's New Ancient Strings, the affinity is profound.

The strings drown everything to mundanity.

Yeah, but I've come to terms with them over time. Still would love to hear the Albini solo masters, though.

i don't know what i think of this LP now. i think i overpraised it initially.

(not sure if you're responding to me when you say "she's not aping african music" - if you are, I must not have made myself very clear since we agree completely)

At some point when I have a little time I'd like to comment further on this (and on the "small death" lyric). Duty calls, though.

http://www.thewire.co.uk/current/images/273cover.jpg

elsewhere on ILM Marcello calls this "bilge"....

I listened to this right through again the other day, It captivates me wonderfully for the first couple of tracks, all of it, the music, the lyricism, the play of the language & her rhythms but soon... fatigue sets in and it's just not as surprising afterwards. Still very nice, but not rapturous, and lacking a true emotional punch for me. I still don't like this as much as the first album really.

And am I the only person who thinks it sounds basically the same all the way through and that's not really a good thing?

Quite honestly I want her to drop the harp for a while (I find myself feeling her overall sound to be quite tart & unpleasant a lot of the time, more so than her vocals even, and I've already said I'm not amazed by the treacly strings here), and travel somewhere OUT of this pastoral prettiness zone next time... maybe new york? somewhere Urban? THAT would seem more "challenging" to me than this, maybe next album. I HOPE she puts what she's learned/extended upon here to more interesting uses in the future (maybe interspersed with shorter "normal" songs?), I just feel like she's playing up to her audience too much here. The formalities of this record look risky but I don't think the final creative product is, at least not quite as much as people are saying. It's lovely, idillyic and escapist sure, but it's also quite a lot of froth.

Nevertheless I'm glad she's made this record. It at least shows the doubters she's didn't just get lucky first time round. It's accomplished, it's dense and open, flows very naturally BUT I'm yet to be convinced it actually has depth and isn't merely a bit too clever for it's own good. Overrated? absolutely! but by no means worthless. I expect the real "backlash" will come sometime after the inevitable Pitchfork 9.9 (if they can bear to give anything a higher rating than The Hold Steady this year).

also not sure why being able to take it at one sitting is a big issue. I suppose this is your listening preference. I tend to listen to a track of this at a time.

xp

I still find this an admirable, ambitious record, but also a flawed and problematic one. I doubt anyone else is going to nail how I feel about this one closer than the Stylus review. Which gives it a good grade, but reads as similarly conflicted w/r/t to my own feelings about Ys, even if they don't quite stretch to "enchantment".

I've only listened to it once so far, but it did sort of remind me of the Phil Ochs song 'Crucifixion' in places. Obviously that's the Van Dyke Parks link in full effect.