As everyone who cares about harp-wielding freak-folk singers knows by now, the wonderful dudes at Pitchfork somehow leaked the new, supposedly much-anticipated Joanna Newsom album three months before its release date. This could prove devastating to Newsom’s sales – she might sell four records, instead of five – unless... Yeah, I don’t really care, either. Mostly because I heard the thing. Newsom’s a polarizing figure in the indie world. She has her fan base. But her voice can drive you nuts, and when she’s not playing a harp – that’s right – she’s playing a harpsichord. Now, I actually liked her full-length debut, Milk-Eyed Mender. That record featured twelve little tunes that perfectly fit her little girl-voice. There was an unpretentious sense of discovery and wonder, there. No, really. In one song she kept proudly repeating “Cassiopeia” like she’d just learned how to say it. A song called “The Book of Right-On?” How awesome was that? “I killed my dinner with karate” was not just a fun line, it sounded great on its way out.
The follow-up, though, is bloated, horrid, and sure to wind up on everyone’s Best of the Year list. Fifty-five minutes of music are ladled thickly over five whole songs. The shortest track is over seven minutes. The longest, called “Only Skin” is... well, how long you got?
I ask because I, being the self-sacrificing masochist I am, am going to listen to all SIXTEEN MINUTES AND FIFTY-THREE SECONDS of that song for a SECOND TIME. And I invite you to read along with me as I squirm through.
Don’t worry. I’ve consulted my physician. And have taken precautions: Someone will call in exactly seventeen minutes to make sure I’m okay. I’m oiled and lubed, caffeinated and... psyched. That’s right, I’m fucking psyched to do this. Watch out world, I’m pressing “Play.”
00:07 No longer psyched. The first word in the song is “And.” And while I’m a fan (obvs) of starting sentences with conjunctions, starting a lengthy work with one makes me feel like I’m drowning in the middle of something. Lo, I’m lost, already.
00:19 Drowning’s not such a bad thing to throw out here, as the record’s title – Ys – refers to a mythical underwater city; built below sea-level, Ys (pr. “Eess,” not “Wise” – a convenient pun – and certainly not “Yes.” “Yes,” by the way, is the name of a totally unrelated classic progressive rock band known for producing interminable goofyshit songs) was destroyed by a flood when its protective dams were compromised. How this comes into play during the album – and whether or not there are any juicy Katrina parables to be found – is for someone else to ponder. The word-count for this ditty alone reaches 3225 (you can find the lyrics here); that’s a lotta “Row, row, row your boat.” 00:39 “You froze in your sand shoal/prayed for your poor soul/sky was a bread roll/soaking in a milk bowl” Oooo, somebody got themselves a Rhyming Dictionary. Newsom’s made a very conscious effort to tone down her screechiness, this time around; that’s a good thing, because the pleasant sing-song of her earlier stuff wouldn’t cut it on a seventeen-minute track. But newcomers are still likely to have voice issues. The vocals are really only more soothing when placed side-by-side with Mender. At best, she sounds a little Björkish; a worst, she sounds like Tweety reciting the Epic of Gilgamesh.
01.21 I’m starting to think about wanting to kill myself.
01:34 Okay, what’s this “hairless and blind cavalry” she keeps going on about? Actually, what’s all of this everything she keeps going on about? She sings and sings and sings. If she didn’t have to inhale there’d be no break to it.
01:44 Abrupt change in tempo. We’re rushing along, and – blurt – a French horn. Did we really need that? The whole thing’s fully orchestrated, and the eminent Van Dyke Parks is responsible for that side of the project. It’s generally a pretty supportive score, and for that reason it never takes off. There’s no room for it. But Van Dyke Parks, man: I laughed when he tripped over that ottoman, every single time. 01:45 The faster pace isn’t really helping matters any because the language just gets piled on faster. “Well what is this craziness?” she sings, “This crazy talking?” Woman, you talkin’ crazy talk! Elephant talk? Elephant talk!
01:54 “You caught some small death while you were sleepwalking.” See, now, that’s lovely. What’s most frustrating about Ys as a whole isn’t that it’s awful, it’s that it isn’t awful. I wish I could just say “never again.” But there are things worth hearing buried under loads and loads of crappy blahblahblah.
02:27 Story has us fishing for herbs, now. I’ll give her this: Sister’s doing her own thing. She’s certainly not harp-synching along to the prerecorded pluck of the whole TRL prog/freak folk crowd. It takes a lot more effort to fool people into liking this stuff than it does Paris Hilton’s record. So, you go, girl. Just, y’know, go elsewhere.
02:37 Grinds to a halt. Grrrreat. Mayhaps we’re fishing from a Blueberry Boat. Indie-prog sux.
03:59 Now this is beautiful. The music’s gotten rich, it swells and subsides like the waves we’re supposedly rowing over. The words, too, come and go. It almost feels, I dunno, Rodgers and Hammersteinish, maybe? It’s lovely, and I’m sure it won’t last.
04:27 Nope.
05:05 Somewhere a delusional indie chick is listening to this next to her new boyfriend. Beaming, she grabs his hand. “This is our song,” she tells him. Terrified, he nods.
05:13 Scraping your knee “makes the sound of violins.” Another lovely line and smartly, no strings behind it.
05:36 Another change and... accordion. A sea shanty? No, we’re “knee deep, trudging along,” now. Seriously, does she even know what she’s singing about? I want to get swept up in this but the song keeps devolving into endless babble. Gimme something to get behind, Joanna.
07:03 Sisyphus rolls in. If all else fails, toss out a mythological reference or two. It’s deep. I should say, somewhere, that my experience with medieval music is severely limited. All your madrigals and Thomas Tallis and Whatserface von Bingen – dunno. Just in case someone’s going to bring up some historical precedent for this crap. To which I say: “Yes, well, in ye olde days it took like three weeks to get from Brooklyn to Queens. So they had time to kill.” Okay, bad example. G train. But you know what I mean. Right? Right? Moving on...
07:38 Ooo, drama. The vocals are getting overwhelmed by the orchestra... but unfortunately, they fight back. Oh! An unexpected side-effect: Her voice has completely cleared out my sinuses.
08:06 Not far now, my little smurfs.
08:32 “That’s an awfully real gun.” Another awesome line. But remember, for every quote I pull there’s ten BILLION unimpressive others, flying by.
08:53 It’s probably a good time to address the album’s cover, and I’m not sure how exactly to do it justice. But I know who might. 09.21 At this point in a song, is there anything you could do to involve a listener? Most long songs will have a hook or a mood or something they can build on. Most good ones, at least. And as they take detours, the listener’s aware that it’s okay, we’ll reprise that hook or mood or whatever by the end. But there’s nothing to look forward to, here. Nothing was established other than the fact that nothing’s going to be established. At...
09:47 ...I’ve concluded this song is a wholly useless enterprise. Musically, it’s irrelevant – you can’t get involved, because it’s going to shift gears in another 35 seconds – and as storytelling it’s dissuasive. The teller will just blather away, smothering any interest you might have had, and then when something interesting comes up (“...that’s when I decided I had to pull out my chainsaw and cut him in half”) you – snork? wha? – start paying attention again, only to have your newfound interest go unrewarded (“My uncle Jonathan – boy, he was a funny one – got me that chainsaw, yup, and he got it secondhand from this flea market down in Somerset off I-54 – you ever been to Somerset? Some nice people there, but you really have to watch out – only during August, mind you – for the Jews.”) Snork? Wha? And so on.
9:56 A reprise of sorts, but she’s harmonizing with herself, now, and it’s a bit freaky. Whatever. I’ve stopped caring.
10:46 “In Kuwait?” Snork-wha? Is this some sort of wartime diatribe? No, false alarm, just a ten-dollar word. 10:57 Am contemplating legal action.
11:45 There was something so endearing about Newsom’s storytelling on Mender, like spending a half-hour minding a friend’s precocious but surprisingly bearable kindergartner. What charming out-of-left field thoughts! Ah, childhood! But this record doesn’t just make you grateful you don’t have kids, it makes you want to run out and get a vasectomy. There, that’s my pull-quote: “Joanna Newsom’s Ys will make you ask people to slice open your scrotum.”
Not aggressive enough. Much more of this, I’ll start strangling small children with my bare hands. By God, this isn’t a musical recording, it’s a right-to-life issue. Or might have something to do with Homeland Security. Am not sure. Am losing my ability to form complete thoughts.
11:51 – Here, why don’t I share the pain:
12.00 Lunch
12:45 Alternate titles for Joanna Newsom’s new record:
- I’m Clubbing Your Neighbor’s Pet to Death with a Heavy, Stringed Instrument
- Hope You Didn’t Pay Money for This
- Hurtz Donut
- If This Doesn’t Get Me a 10.0 on Pitchfork and Some Sweet MacArthur Fellowship Money, Nothing Will
- He Poos Shit
- Makin’ Stuff Up as I Go Along (and Going Along, Going Along)
- You’ve Got to be Fucking Kidding Me
- Well, You Should Have Gone Before We Left
- ...and THAT’s Why They Call it a “Harp”
- Has Anyone Seen My Medication?
- Bring Back Corporal Punishment in Our Schools
- Wirecutters, Anyone?
- Community Service
13:42 Ack. There’s some guy singing, and a banjo, and... I think he’s saying “99 bottles of beer on the wall, 99 bottles of beer...” Maybe that's just a voice in my head. This record was recorded by Steve Albini, who should have known better.
14.27 According to this list, the song’s running time ties it with Embryo’s 1975 composition “Human Contact” as the 381st longest non-classical song ever recorded (that people have remembered to include on that list). It’s sitting between Sinkadus’ “Agren” and Arzachel’s “Metempsychosis,” so I think we can all agree it’s in pretty good company. It’s only twelve seconds short of that benchmark of my-God-when-will-it-endness, Iron Butterfly’s “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Fifty years from now, people will still know the riff to “In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida.” Fifty years from now, if I have my way, you will be thrown in prison and have three major appendages removed if you mention Joanna Newsom’s “Only Skin.” 14:47 For relief, I’ve started rubbing the new Cheap Trick CD all over my body. Sweet, sweet rock and roll.
15:31 I just realized there’s a chorus.
15:42 Billy Pierson didn’t break the bowl, I did. We were playing ball in the house, like you said not to. It won’t happen again, I swear. Just please, make it stop.
16.20 There’s a fire, she’s trying to clear the room, but she just keeps talking.
16.22 Just punched myself in the face.
16.53 And the last ten seconds or so are silence. Let’s all think about what we just went through, okay, and promise to never, ever let it happen again. Like the Holocaust, or Rwanda, or Darfur.
*
*
(*)No, of course that MP3’s not the Joanna Newsom song. It’s renowned Japanese voice artist Makigami Koichi! But you knew that. The track is called “Uxhi;” it’s from his CD Koedarake. You can buy that here, and I strongly suggest you do. It’s the sound of someone choking a muppet (or, perhaps, choking on a muppet) for forty-six minutes; it’s funnier than any comedy album could ever hope to be. Seriously. Crying tears-of-joy funny. *
Speaking of Japanese noise, why are there three music festivals in the city this weekend? It’s a holiday weekend, so they’re... counting on everyone being out of town? I’m confused.
- The Japanese New Music Festival at Tonic and Northsix. No Makigami Koichi, though!
- And no Envy or Mono, either; they’re at the three-day Temporary Residence Limited fest at the Bowery. I saw Mono back in May with Pelican at the Avalon; they’re playing Sunday and well worth your time if you like Godspeed!-style post-rock. Lovely stuff. And they will get loud.
- The Drop Dead Fest is at the Knitting Factory. I’m not even vaguely Goth, but this looks like a blast as it’s less Deathcore and more “Gothabilly.” If I go, am I going to get hissed at for “not subscribing to the culture,” or somesuchshit?
- Last Pool Party of the summer, Sunday. Let’s try and leave the place as polished and shiny as we found it, okay?
Everyone have a lovely holiday. I'll see you on the other side, and will hopefully catch up with the last month.
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I know this wasn't your intention BUT I'm actually dying to hear this song
now.