1. Emily
2. Monkey and Bear
3. Sawdust and Diamonds
4. Only Skin
5. Cosmia
Since my last review was of a band that is notably lyrically deficient, I figured I would follow it up with something lyrically outstanding. I had a lot of trouble choosing between this one and Milk-Eyed Mender, but while I feel that album has better songwriting, this one has better lyrics, at least lyrics that are easier to write about. And since the lyrics are what I wanted to focus on, this is the one I ended up with.
It’s a rather different album than her first. Milk-Eyed Mender was released in 2004, most of the songs on it having been previously released on a limited-release 2002 EP. They’re simple, fairly short songs, most accompanied only by Newsom’s harp. The lyrics are strong and well written but more whimsical than profound. Keep in mind that, upon first recording these songs, Newsom was only 20, and had (I’m assuming here) probably written them at various points in time prior to that, rather than immediately prior to recording them. The songs were written when she was young and unknown, and they have a sort of youthful charm to them.
Ys, on the other hand, was written after she had already toured with Will Oldham and Devendra Banhart and become a notable member of the Drag City label and the new folk movement. The songs are written by a more experienced artist, and it shows. Rather than the sparse instrumentation of her previous release, Ys features lush string arrangements by Van Dyke Parks (60s baroque-psychedelic-pop artist and composer, strong collaborator on Brian Wilson’s ex-failed-Beach-Boys-project SMiLE) and songs that hover around and exceed the 10-minute mark (with Only Skin at nearly 17). The songs aren’t mainly instrumental, either; a few instrumental breaks show up here and there, but Newsom is more or less singing throughout. And since she rarely falls into the verse-chorus pattern (though several of the songs do feature refrains of one type or another), this means the lyrics are long and dense.
But before I get there, I just have to get it out of the way that, yes, her voice is a bit unusual. I personally find it perfectly acceptable and almost endearing (and find that she’s improved at singing quite a bit since her first album), but some people just cannot get past it and find it irreconcilably irritating. If you like other Drag City artists (Will Oldham/Bonnie Prince Billy, Devendra Banhart) you probably won’t have a problem with the fact that she sounds a bit unconventional. Personally, I think her songs would only suffer being sung by a different voice, hers has an emotive power to it that fits the lyrics well.
The lyrics themselves cover a wide range of topics that it would be difficult to fit in one review, so I’m only going to focus on the themes that influence me most: consciousness, mortality, and infinity. There’s an existential undercurrent to the entire album that stays, for the most part, optimistic. Take, for example, a line from the opening track, Emily:
We could stand for a century
Staring
With our heads cocked
In the broad daylight at this thing
Joy
Landlocked
In bodies that don’t keep
Dumbstruck with the sweetness of being
Till we don’t be
The idea here is one of joy, one which stems from the appreciation of beauty, both of the external world, of the company of others, of positive emotions, a joy that persists even as we are consciously trapped in mortal bodies. The final statement is a powerful one: rather than be depressed by the impermanence of those things that surround us and of ourselves, rather than letting oneself get depressed about the absurdity of a mortal and fragile existence, she suggests a state of being “dumbstruck,” filled with an incurable awe at the beauty inherent in the very concept of existing as a conscious entity. Despair doesn’t come into the picture, rather, existence is savored for as long as it is present. It’s a Zen-like (or, given that she’s on Drag City, borderline psychedelic) mindset that seems, in the context of her music, natural and realistic.
Sawdust and Diamonds is a bit more sobering in its assessment, the title itself seemingly an allusion to mind-body dualism. The song talks about the construction of a dove made with “glue, and a glove, and some pliers” and continues on until the moment of its completion:
Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision
While, somewhere, with your pliers and glue you make your first incision
And in a moment of almost-unbearable vision
Doubled over with the hunger of lions
‘Hold me close’, cooed the dove
Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds
The work on the dove which has, up until now, been an inanimate object, is completed with the stuffing of sawdust and diamonds – a mundane physical weight with a sparkling and glorious hint of consciousness, or a soul. The dove, rather than being enamored with the gift of life, is terrified. Taken along with Emily, consciousness can lead to profound beauty, but also to profound terror. The dove is overwhelmed by its physical needs and some sort of unbearable vision, which could be of its mortality, its fragility, or the mere fact that it is now an intelligent agent whose being is connected irreversibly with matter. Like Emily, there’s a focus on the nature of being itself, rather than taking it for granted as the default upon which everything else is built. The song continues:
I wanted to say: why the long face?
Sparrow, perch and play songs of long face
Burro, buck and bray songs of long face!
Sing: I will swallow your sadness and eat your cold clay
Just to lift your long faceAnd though it may be madness, I will take to the grave
Your precious longface
And though our bones they may break, and our souls separate
- why the long face?
And though our bodies recoil from the grip of the soil
- why the long face?
Yes, we are mortal and fragile, and the thing we fear most is the death that inevitably awaits everyone. The dove has every right to ask, in its first breath, for comfort, because the reality of life is frightening. Newsom acknowledges the uncomfortable truth, but asks: so what? Why the long face? Again, there’s the insistence that life is something that should be cherished and enjoyed in the present, rather than preoccupied with and despairing about its eventual end.
There’s a lot more I could say about the lyrics here, and I haven’t even gotten to Only Skin, which is an emotional and engrossing monstrosity of a song that needs to be heard to be believed, and I’m sure there are allusions all over the place I haven’t even begun to recognize, but my point was just to give a taste of the sort of lyricism to be found here, which shares less in common with most songwriters and more in common, both in execution and themes, with modern poetry. There’s a literary quality here that you rarely come across in music.
Musically, as I said, it doesn’t really follow verse-chorus, the music just sort of flows from section to section. Melodically, it doesn’t really get boring, and it’s full of catchy hooks and motifs that the songs touch down on from time to time. If this doesn’t sound like the sort of thing you have patience for, you’d be better off with the shorter, more conventional songs on Milk-Eyed Mender.
It takes a few listens to really get into, especially considering the sprawling, stream-of-consciousness structure of most of the songs. There’s a good chance you’ll listen to it once and not really see it. Listen to it twice, it will start to kick in. But there’s a point, I don’t know which listen, where it all clicks together and the songs leave you breathless.
It isn’t perfect, though. Don’t think I’m without complaints. While Van Dyke Park’s arrangements work wonderfully, I feel like they could be toned down a bit. Joanna Newsom’s harp playing is gorgeous and intricate, and on Milk-Eyed Mender you can really appreciate that, but here it tends to be drowned out a bit by the swells of violins. They lend the music a sort of theatrical flair which I really like sometimes, but other times I wish it could be more stripped-down. Sawdust and Diamonds seems to be almost entirely harp-only, and consequently is one of my favorites on the album, so it still definitely works with songs of this length.
I had a hard time deciding which song to upload, but I figure I’ll do Only Skin, since I really like it and didn’t have much to say about it. It’s a long song, so the file is going to be pretty big, comparatively.
Enjoy.
