MankyFiver
Well-known member
god i wish bjork would sing 'straight' i can't bear the trills and vocalisations, when she sings straight she is fantastic and unlike any singer around
Joanna Newsom --- "Ys"
- Thread starter Ivan Polygon
- Start date
god i wish bjork would sing 'straight' i can't bear the trills and vocalisations, when she sings straight she is fantastic and unlike any singer around
CocoRosie is the perfect example of having to forcibly forget everything you know about the group and just listen to their music as is. That's why I have no problem whatsoever with Ms. Newsome. Lovely, hypnotic music...and her personality isn't nearly as abrasive as most of the people here are trying to make it sound. She's a bit of a pseud, but at least that makes things interesting.
If I had to judge the personalities of all the artists I listened to prior to listening to them, my music collection would probably be around 5 discs high. I love Burzum, but I'd have to throttle Varg Vikernes if I had to listen to him talk for more than 3 seconds...and the Louvin Brothers? C'mon!
Diggedy Derek
Stray Dog
Saw Joanna Newsom in Manchester the other month, and it was absolutely stunning- one of the best gigs I've been to for years (I went to an almost as good gig that same week, actually- Kode 9 and Spaceape in a basement playing an astonishing hour-long set with virtually no beats, just basslines surgically melded together until he found the critical resonant point of the room. Spaceape was amazing too, a really smooth, elusive delivery rather than the Prince Far I stuff).
For the first part of the gig, she performed the whole of Ys, in order, with an orchestra. Yet somehow, it felt entirely different to listening to it on record. Her voice sounded lower and much smoother, and her phrasing was entirely different. It reminded me of nothing so much as Billie Holliday- the songs were never sung the same as on record. Consequently, the bits which usually get me emotional didn't, and the bit that usually don't, did. Only Skin seemed to last about an hour, but in the end you felt like you'd been living her life for a month.
Usually the orchestra lagged a little behind her, but her harp was pretty damn amazing. Consequently, "Sawdust and Diamonds" was a stellar highlight, Those bass notes resonate like, er, a bell dropped in the ocean. Some new songs, too, one folky and forceful one which sounds has a kind of Dave Swarbrick-type fire.
While I'm here, that CocoRosie album is really good an' all.
For the first part of the gig, she performed the whole of Ys, in order, with an orchestra. Yet somehow, it felt entirely different to listening to it on record. Her voice sounded lower and much smoother, and her phrasing was entirely different. It reminded me of nothing so much as Billie Holliday- the songs were never sung the same as on record. Consequently, the bits which usually get me emotional didn't, and the bit that usually don't, did. Only Skin seemed to last about an hour, but in the end you felt like you'd been living her life for a month.
Usually the orchestra lagged a little behind her, but her harp was pretty damn amazing. Consequently, "Sawdust and Diamonds" was a stellar highlight, Those bass notes resonate like, er, a bell dropped in the ocean. Some new songs, too, one folky and forceful one which sounds has a kind of Dave Swarbrick-type fire.
While I'm here, that CocoRosie album is really good an' all.
N
nomadologist
Guest
my point is nothing. i don't really care about him, i just saw that video randomly and thought i'd share.
Is this the "bass poetry" thing thats been talked about then>>>?
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nomadologist
Guest
You know, I do concede that Ys is pretty in a pastoral nu-folk sort of way that does push the formal limitations of folk and its bastard children on the American indie front, but I think that is what stops the album just short of being this amazing prog curio. I don't think it's so out of left-field at all, especially considering the freak folk thing has been going strong for a while.
I was just talking to someone about this AGAIN tonight, and I guess I just got to the bottom of why it bugs me so much that Ys is so universally gushingly lauded (even by many typically electronic-eared people who in busier years for music and hype probably wouldn't given it the time of day). First, I think it's indie rock's final desperate bid at "relevance" sonically, since indie's been losing underground cache for so long, having become stagnate and reliant on threadbare "diary-entry" style idioms culled from the artistic/life experience of a now cliched "tortured babyboomer's son with his acoustic guitar at Wesleyan who got dumped once" demographic. I think the fact that Ys was written by a female has a lot to do with the concessions people make for its excesses. If the vocalist were male, would anyone like this album beyond the niche market of freakfolk fans you'd wholly expect to like it? I think the album's sort of self-consciously over-the-top arthagalicious approach has been latched onto by indie fans who hope that the whitebread flavor indie rock has been exuding has been spiced up by the presence of a female who takes huge artistic risks (at least, by indie standards, which I think are tame compared to my own). I think she's liked best by those who are desperately looking for an indie messiah.
Second, as a female, I think I may have a problem with just how self-indulgently out-of-touch the album is. While it plays to an obviously liberal folk-lover Bobo/yippie base, it is almost alarmingly silent about politics and seems defiantly irrelevant. Now, this is coming from someone who hates cheap token displays of liberalism in my music. But I do think that you can be mindful of the world and the political climate in aesthetically abstract, oblique, interesting, challenging ways without ever saying an explicit word about politics, and Ys seems to have been written in the same historio-political vacuum that Renaissance Fairs aim to take place in. Everyone's been dumped and heartbroken and coped. I don't think it's the most profound and artistically fecund of human experiences, personally.
When Kate Bush was so radically artsy--took on poets, themes, and used imagery instantly recognized as deliberately "feminine"--there was also an edge to her very traditional gender performances (a sonic one, a formal one in her dancing, and an overall edgy attitude) that lifted her above being just the former girlfriend of a Pink Floyd member writing pretty songs. She dove headfirst into her own experience of being female but with all its ugliness and raw energy--I just can't stop getting this vibe from Newsom that tells me people like her because she writes about having her heartbroken in an acceptable way, in a flighty, "irrational," overwrought, "hysterically" feminine way. No rage--like Liz PHair, who knew she was being fetishized by her male counterparts in the grunge scene, and hated it.
To me (and this is JUST MY OPINION), she comes across like a female artist loved by the predominantly male indie establishment for playing into all the condescending, limiting stereotypes men have of female artists--that they're self-indulgent, completely self-absorbed, out-of-touch with the big picture that is history, relegated entirely to domestic and loving it, hopelessly romantic, and above all, completely vulnerable and susceptible to male ("masculine") power. Like she's playing damsel in distress, but without songs like "Waking the Witch" to ensure she's a square peg that won't be pushed into the round hole. It's like she's making music for the "hearth" and wishes she could be saved by Prince Charming and wants to go back to sewing and being an earth goddess or whatever.
Reminds me of that Englishman's painting where the sailor is saving the woman from drowning. Only in the inverse...
(Wow this was quite the treatise. Thank god for you all that I'm insomniacing!)
I was just talking to someone about this AGAIN tonight, and I guess I just got to the bottom of why it bugs me so much that Ys is so universally gushingly lauded (even by many typically electronic-eared people who in busier years for music and hype probably wouldn't given it the time of day). First, I think it's indie rock's final desperate bid at "relevance" sonically, since indie's been losing underground cache for so long, having become stagnate and reliant on threadbare "diary-entry" style idioms culled from the artistic/life experience of a now cliched "tortured babyboomer's son with his acoustic guitar at Wesleyan who got dumped once" demographic. I think the fact that Ys was written by a female has a lot to do with the concessions people make for its excesses. If the vocalist were male, would anyone like this album beyond the niche market of freakfolk fans you'd wholly expect to like it? I think the album's sort of self-consciously over-the-top arthagalicious approach has been latched onto by indie fans who hope that the whitebread flavor indie rock has been exuding has been spiced up by the presence of a female who takes huge artistic risks (at least, by indie standards, which I think are tame compared to my own). I think she's liked best by those who are desperately looking for an indie messiah.
Second, as a female, I think I may have a problem with just how self-indulgently out-of-touch the album is. While it plays to an obviously liberal folk-lover Bobo/yippie base, it is almost alarmingly silent about politics and seems defiantly irrelevant. Now, this is coming from someone who hates cheap token displays of liberalism in my music. But I do think that you can be mindful of the world and the political climate in aesthetically abstract, oblique, interesting, challenging ways without ever saying an explicit word about politics, and Ys seems to have been written in the same historio-political vacuum that Renaissance Fairs aim to take place in. Everyone's been dumped and heartbroken and coped. I don't think it's the most profound and artistically fecund of human experiences, personally.
When Kate Bush was so radically artsy--took on poets, themes, and used imagery instantly recognized as deliberately "feminine"--there was also an edge to her very traditional gender performances (a sonic one, a formal one in her dancing, and an overall edgy attitude) that lifted her above being just the former girlfriend of a Pink Floyd member writing pretty songs. She dove headfirst into her own experience of being female but with all its ugliness and raw energy--I just can't stop getting this vibe from Newsom that tells me people like her because she writes about having her heartbroken in an acceptable way, in a flighty, "irrational," overwrought, "hysterically" feminine way. No rage--like Liz PHair, who knew she was being fetishized by her male counterparts in the grunge scene, and hated it.
To me (and this is JUST MY OPINION), she comes across like a female artist loved by the predominantly male indie establishment for playing into all the condescending, limiting stereotypes men have of female artists--that they're self-indulgent, completely self-absorbed, out-of-touch with the big picture that is history, relegated entirely to domestic and loving it, hopelessly romantic, and above all, completely vulnerable and susceptible to male ("masculine") power. Like she's playing damsel in distress, but without songs like "Waking the Witch" to ensure she's a square peg that won't be pushed into the round hole. It's like she's making music for the "hearth" and wishes she could be saved by Prince Charming and wants to go back to sewing and being an earth goddess or whatever.
Reminds me of that Englishman's painting where the sailor is saving the woman from drowning. Only in the inverse...
(Wow this was quite the treatise. Thank god for you all that I'm insomniacing!)
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Diggedy Derek
Stray Dog
Possibly- it had this kind of Lynton Kwesi Johnson thing about it- but really, really good, with the voice sunmerge in the bass. It also sounded somewhat like Tricky (ie more than the album did, in my opinion).
One of the best gigs I've been to in years, it was.
One of the best gigs I've been to in years, it was.
took me a second to realize this was not about Miss Newsom..!
yes! I thank god for the insomniaceries, I thank the insomniaceration for the good points made, and I thank the good points for giving clear and tangible shape to some half assed murky thoughts floating around my own head regarding this Newsom phenonmenon...
and what's more, these same, atleast similar, gripes and misgivings I feel a lot these days about other artists and work, be it music or visual, which end up being championed... it seems like more often than not they fit your description: apathetic, vague, solipsistic, safe, compliant with status quo, even regressive and/or repressive in an alarmingly reactionary way, but always disguised with just enough "weirdness"...
but no insomniacism for me tonight... about to pass out...
Damn, Nomad, I think you've summed yourself up pretty damn well there and uhhh I think you're largely right. But I still like her music. Does that make me a bad person? 
I guess maybe I'm happy that it's at least fairly sonically progressive, and, well, not everything I listen to needs to be politically progressive too; sometimes it's nice to listen to something a little safe. Thought that's clearly not much of an argument...
I guess maybe I'm happy that it's at least fairly sonically progressive, and, well, not everything I listen to needs to be politically progressive too; sometimes it's nice to listen to something a little safe. Thought that's clearly not much of an argument...timellison
Member
Yes, I think Matthew Friedberger's compositions on the Fiery Furnaces' <i>Blueberry Boat</i> album are an example. If that album had been as fully realized as <i>Ys</i>, there's no reason why it wouldn't have been as successful. Had a decent crossover as it was. (And I don't think the fact that his sister sings lead on most of it had anything to do with it other than the fact that she is a better singer than he is.)
I also think that your characterizations of people who like the album look like strawmen and that you undervalue the emotional resonance of the compositions on a human level. The postmodern stylistic context is too easily read as escapism.
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nomadologist
Guest
Turtles, I wouldn't mind that she's not politically "progressive" if there were other redeeming values-- if I didn't think she were at the same time playing into negative "feminine" stereotypes that continue to setback women artists in a genre that should be one of the most saavy to feminist issues (the most upper middle class white one around these days.)
Great example of great music that happens to be made by women: ESG's "A South Bronx Story." Sonically interesting, fresh, and relevant at the time. Respectable on all levels without being politically inflected AND--most importantly-- often dealing with romantic relationships and sexual experiences from a distinctly female perspective without being corny and playing into a helpless weak needy stereotype. Compared to ESG, Joanna Newsom's sexual politics seem like they're straight from psyche of a middle school girl who still has tea parties and plays dress up while her parents tell her she's the specialists little princess in the world. I know I have extremely high standards when it comes to these things, but as the Bible says, "to whom much is given, from them much is required." She went to a private undergrad institution for women, so I KNOW she *should* know better. (I went to a Seven Sister school for undergrad, and girls like her plagued campus: they thought they were doing the world a favor doing the lord's elevated work by studying art history, even though it was just to bide time until they got married to a surgeon twice their age and dabbled in a home graphic design business using the first installment from their trustfunds.)
Great example of great music that happens to be made by women: ESG's "A South Bronx Story." Sonically interesting, fresh, and relevant at the time. Respectable on all levels without being politically inflected AND--most importantly-- often dealing with romantic relationships and sexual experiences from a distinctly female perspective without being corny and playing into a helpless weak needy stereotype. Compared to ESG, Joanna Newsom's sexual politics seem like they're straight from psyche of a middle school girl who still has tea parties and plays dress up while her parents tell her she's the specialists little princess in the world. I know I have extremely high standards when it comes to these things, but as the Bible says, "to whom much is given, from them much is required." She went to a private undergrad institution for women, so I KNOW she *should* know better. (I went to a Seven Sister school for undergrad, and girls like her plagued campus: they thought they were doing the world a favor doing the lord's elevated work by studying art history, even though it was just to bide time until they got married to a surgeon twice their age and dabbled in a home graphic design business using the first installment from their trustfunds.)
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nomadologist
Guest
I think Blueberry Boat is terrible, and beyond that, I don't think it's been nearly as lauded by people who wouldn't normally listen to indie rock as Ys has been.
I know of lots of music that resonates to me on a "human level", and Ys doesn't. It looks like a strawman when Newsom fans accuse anyone who dislikes her of not being "human" enough in their appreciation of music.
timellison
Member
Please don't put words in my mouth. When I say "undervalue the emotional resonance," it is in reference to this seeming desire to write the album off as a "Renaissance Fair" trifle when I would have to believe that anyone truly giving the work a fair shake would at least admit to it having some sense of accomplishment.
Guybrush
Dittohead
This is a ridiculous question (the answer is yes), and most of the arguments put forth here are equally ridiculous. Joanna Newsom is more feministic than anyone in here — it all depends on how you define it (everything is relative, you know
). Oh yeah, also, all the hair-splitting and strawman-ing is making me dizzy...
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nomadologist
Guest
Read the first paragraph of the post up there--I say it sounds nice. Do people here even read? Or do they just jump to conclusions about what you've said?
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nomadologist
Guest
This is a ridiculous question (the answer is yes), and most of the arguments put forth here are equally ridiculous. Joanna Newsom is more feministic than anyone in here — it all depends on how you define it (everything is relative, you know
Guybrush, since when do you even know what a strawman is? I think Ellison here is abusing that term and I only used it back at him to make fun of how stupid that is.
You *can* think of Newsom as a feminist, but I *don't*. I can continue to explain why, especially since you don't know nearly as much about American culture as you seem to think you do, and might not be catching a lot of subtle issues Americans would have with her persona.
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nomadologist
Guest
Guybrush
Dittohead
The term ‘straw man’ is often used figuratively meaning ‘man of straw’, which my dictionary translates as ‘a feigned adversary’. ILXors use it all the time with that denotation—often coupled with that elusive ‘red herring’—so, yes, I have encountered it before.
A trifle presumptuous, no?