I mentioned recently that Joanna Newsom’s new album Ys left be baffled and smitten. Yesterday evening I spent a little time getting better acquainted with it. This meant listening to it on my hi-fi rather than my little office speakers and with the lights out, accompanied by a bottle of wine.

Joanna’s debut album The Milk-Eyed Mender is a unique adventure: songs played on harp and harpsichord, with imaginative, weirdly-worldy lyrics, sung in the voice of a 5 year old girl. But, Ys is different. Different because it exposes the purpose of that debut album, which was to demonstrate that she could write songs. Throughout Ys, Joanna basically looks at that album and says ‘Okay, I’ve done some simple songs, now I’ll do what I want to do!” The Milk-Eyed Mender is a come-hither tease for the main event, which is Ys.

Ys is spell-binding. And it requires complete undivided attention. Let your mind wander anywhere else and the spell will be broken, and yes, you’ll end up being baffled too. You need to concentrate on everything: Joanna’s stories, the way she sings, the melodies she sings, and the orchestral backing. It’s this orchestration which one could think of as ‘difficult’. Because, whilst Joanna sings and plays her harp, the backing meanders, as if to dab paint on the worlds she constructs. Sometimes holding back, sometimes scampering forward beyond the song. The aftertaste of the orchestration is just as important as what is actually played. Despite the lush production, there is so much missing. And that’s very cool. Don’t be put off by the length of each track either – there is no time or space when listening to this album.

Go and buy Ys, please. You may not hear anything like it for the next four hundred years.

[Amazon UK]
[Guardian Review]