Joanna Newsom --- "Ys"

[sus]

When Joanna Newsom’s album Divers first appeared in 2015, many people were quick to point out that it was a loop, that the last song ends on a “half word” that is completed by the first word of the first song. Listeners then uncovered a nod from the artist to another great work with a similar looping structure—James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake. The last song on Divers contains the line “a way a lone a last a loved a long”, which is lifted directly from the last line of the Wake

...I’ve written a decent amount about how Divers is filled with imagery and references to cycles, circles, spirals, etc.

 

[craner]

i know, i know, lots of music i like (basic channel is great) was funded by the disgustingly wealthy and their unduly lucky children. that was pretty rare-- problem is now there's the whole "trustfund hipster" cultural phenomenon over here.

if you lived in brooklyn you would want to hari kari a million times a day like i do, because its crawling with people like newsom who think she's an artist because she once read keats and she has a closet full of fairy princess costumes with a couple military buttons sewed on that she bought at a boutique at a 500% markup. these trustfund hipsters have no discernable talent (when they do they use it in the service of warmed over freakfolk like 90% of the time), and--here's the scariest part--are even starting to multiply. yes, they are getting married and having kids, whom they push around the barrio in antique "prams" (i'm not making this up) and say things like "regular strollers are so tacky" while standing next to a mexican women with three children and no stroller (saw this happen). it's getting seriously disturbing. the city is rezoning just to try to accomodate them, yet when Subway (restaurant) tried to move in so the construction workers could afford something for lunch (the other restaurants are vegan organic specialty shops), they tried to stop construction because it would "upset the character of the neighborhood."

just last night i walked past sufjan stevens bedford ave near north 5th in williamsburg. he gave me his "do you know who i am? do my upper middle class blue eyes penetrate your soul? i'm a POET" look. i wanted to strangle him with my headphone chord.

IN SHORT, there are a million reasons to hate joanna newsom. she's the perfect figurehead for everything that sucks in music/culture at the moment, imo.

@sus

 

[sus]

I'm sorry but this is an embarrassing post.

 

[sus]

Joanna Newsom sings modernist poetry over polyrhythms. There is no lyricist more sophisticated than her in 100 years of popular music. Take "Sapokanikan": layers upon layers of allusions to painting, geology, the history of New York.

"No discernable talent" is, I'm sure, why Van Dyke Parks spent six months of his life scoring Ys. Which she wrote at age 23. "No talent" is a laughable accusation. Joanna Newsom has more talent in her pinky finger than half this board. Joanna Newsom has been classically trained as a harpist and composing songs since she was six years old. Joanna Newsom is a freak musical-literary prodigy; to use her as an emblem of indie amateurism is a joke. It's laughable. It's the worst possible example you can pick. It's like using Animal Collective as an example to bash on three-chord guitar bands. Like what the fuck are you actually talking about.

This post speaks legions more about Nomad, her neuroses, and her critical ignorance than it does Newsom.

 

[sus]

@craner

 

[sus]

Page 5 of this thread is the most embarrassing series of comments I've ever seen on the Internet. K-Punk calling her "Lisa Simpson" discredits his entire oeuvre.

I've given it a half-dozen tries but nothing seems to stick. was going to be persistent but it might be difficult to take it seriously after nomad's last post and k-punk's lisa simpson comparison!

Keep trying.

today i downloaded track 2 off this (monkey and bear) and it is indeed abject. emetic nursery rhymes for entitled cunts and their wetly sincere friends and their lactose intolerant alpine hitler babies etc.

It's an extended metaphor for trust, freedom, and control modeled around the history of dancing bears and the myth of the Ursa Major constellation, dipshit.

Joanna Newsom documentary. I think I just ruined my New Year's. I'm serious. I'm supposed to start my chemical celebration in few hours, but this may obliterate my chances of having fun at all. Didn't Tori Amos cultivate this persona 15 years ago? thought so

Go fuck yourself, she isn't "cultivating a persona," she's producing arguably the most sophisticated artistic-cultural-literary artifacts of the early 21st century and you're not paying attention.

These people live in dreamland. They don't live in reality. They aren't serious people.

 

[craner]

I am still waiting for Joanna Newsom to offer us something as sublime as Nomad's pram rant.

 

[sus]

I dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the water—
Frowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under forever
In a mud-cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror

 

[linebaugh]

Dont have an opinion on newsom but saying she sounds like lisa simpson is very funny

 

[thirdform]

you need to stop messing about with simulacra of the modern and go listen to
schoenberg.

 

[sus]

you need to stop messing about with simulacra of the modern and go listen to
schoenberg.

I took an entire course on Schoenberg.

 

[Clinamenic]

Which Simpson is Schoenberg supposed to be?

 

[thirdform]

I took an entire course on Schoenberg.

Fascinating. Then you are like (although he will take offence to it) but we all know that Oliver @craner is an inverted snob.

 

[Mr. Naga Pickle]

Which Simpson is Schoenberg supposed to be?

 

[HMGovt’s Glorious Return!]

Joanna Newsom is the anti-Siren, many are repelled by her idiosyncratic voice and flounder on the rocks of incomprehension when they should have followed her call to the sun-dappled, wood smoked uplands.