Steve Albini was the one who produced this album, and it was mixed by fellow Drag City labelmate at the time Jim O'Rourke. Van Dyke Parks did the orchestral arrangements on the album on a skeleton of Joanna Newsom's harp and vocals. This was her second album, and she didn't have a lot of money to make it; that's why she went with Steve Albini, who is renowned for his policy of producing music he likes at the rate of pay-what-you-can. Getting Van Dyke Parks on the project was another small miracle, as he was also way out of her budget, but decided to do it anyways as a passion project because he really liked her music. The album would be considered progressive neoclassical contemporary folk/singer-songwriter, if you had to put it in a box. The rhythmic complexity comes from joanna's predilection for polyrhythmic harp playing (inspired by West African kora music), shifting time signatures, and tempo changes, as well as her heavy use of syncopation. It's certainly something you have to get used to when listening to her music, but isn't a turn-off or deal-breaker even if you aren't into that kind of thing, since her music is all very organic and emotionally poignant. It's the perfect blend of technicality and expressiveness.
Just wait until you hear "Emily", or "Monkey and Bear", or "Have One on Me", or "Good Intentions Paving Co.", or "Baby Birch", or "Sapokanikan", or "Waltz of the 101st Lightborne", or "Time, As a Symptom", or ... you get the picture.
This whole album is just jaw-dropping. Glad you got to listen to part of it. Btw It is a harp and believe it or not Joanna is the one playing it as well as singing
It's interesting you noted that Joanna's harp-playing sounds somewhat not harp-like, and leans toward almost sounding like a guitar at some points. Joanna started writing and composing on the harp with assistance from her teacher at age 6, as she was learning. Her sound has always been very opposite to what I think a lot of us think of harp music sounding like. She was also much more inspired by African harp traditions as opposed to classical harp we tend to hear more in the states. But her biggest musical influences are country & folk musicians: Karen Dalton, Joni Mitchell, and I feel like her harp comes through a bit as a guitar sound in some of her music because she's employing Appalachian and folk guitar traditions in her music. I've never seen harp sheet music like hers, it's fascinating the choices she makes composing her instrument
Thank you for an awesome job looking at such a complex song on just a single listen. On the specifics of how the production sounds, here's a direct quote from an interview with Joanna: "I've sort of always been really obsessed with the idea of balancing elements out, especially in collaboration. So I was working with Van Dyke on these kind of sumptuous, lush, cinematic, very romantic, and slightly Copeland-esque orchestral arrangements, and it was really important to me that at the core of this record would then be a recording that basically sounded like you were sitting in a room with me. I didn't want to lose that intimacy and the immediacy of the harp and vocal performance. And I feel like Steve [Albini] is the person who - he basically delivers reality, but the beautiful version of reality--- ---And so I wanted him to record it, but then I wanted Jim O'Rourke to mix it because I wanted this third element. Because I feel that the way Jim O'Rourke mixes records would be a strong reference to Van Dyke Parks' early stuff and Randy Newman's early stuff, and this kind of early 70s way of treating an orchestra that doesn't happen very much now. Kind of the opposite of lush, cinematic orchestral treatment. One in which the individual textures and voices and character of each instrument exists and sort of rises up in these little vignettes, very stylized, and I feel that's how Jim mixes."
This is one of my favorite albums of the 2010s. I've wanted you to react to Sawdust & Diamonds from this album for a while as it's my favorite Joanna Newsom song, but I can't be upset that Only Skin got selected because it's awesome too. I just love how Newsom's music, especially on her first three albums (the other Newsom song you heard was from her 4th and latest), has this almost ancient quality to it. Part of it is in the folk simplicity that evokes such old and primal musical traditions; but the lyrics too seem completely out of time, like they could've been written in almost any prior century. I also love how the music itself ebbs and flows with the emotional currents of the lyrics; it feels stream-of-conscious but without the more incoherent aspects of that mode of writing/composition. It's also dreamlike but with enough tethers to reality that even if you can't follow the precise meaning from moment to moment it still feels significant on an aesthetic, emotional, intuitive level. There's so many surprises and odd touches, but not to the point they feel like pure chaos or done randomly for the sake of surprise. There's also a ton of emotion, but it's frequently ambivalent and hard to definitively pin down to one feeling. Anyway, I'll stop gushing, but Newsom and this album particularly is one of my favorite musical discoveries in recent years. Thanks to the person who recommended this. Would love to see you react to this whole album. EDIT: Funnily enough I wrote this comment before listening to your analysis. Amazing how we touched on so many of the same ideas! As for the production, it's actually pretty common for folk to have the vocals recorded to feel like they're extremely close to the listener. That probably comes from the tradition of live folk performances in which a singer would often be sitting and singing for a small audience that was also right in front of them. Obviously that changed once acts like Dylan got huge and started playing at huge venues, but the older folk tradition was different, and even Dylan's "pure folk" era was produced like this. Her instrument is definitely a harp. EDIT 2: Her lyrical style is indeed quite dense, but not indecipherable if you take your time to linger over phrases/metaphors and grasp onto the overarching themes without getting too lost in the themes. You got quite a bit of it too; it is indeed about a complex, volatile relationship in which her lover suffers from PTSD. She tries to love and be there for him but he's more detached and distant, perhaps because of his trauma. I don't normally recommend Genius pages on lyrical analysis, but the Genius page for this song is pretty good, especially in how it points out many of the allusions and references. I caught some of them myself but there's quite a few. Newsom's style seems heavily influenced by Nabokov and Faulkner, two of my favorite authors, and apparently she even acknowledged taking the image of "hands in your pockets" from Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, which is easily one of my top 5 favorite novels (Faulkner is very much stream-of-consciousness turned up to 11 and makes Newsom seem like AC/DC by comparison!).
Dream-like but tethered" is the perfect way to describe *every aspect* of this track. The music, the lyrics, the feelings. And I'm glad you brought up the "odd choices but not feeling random" because that is exactly what I think is missing in a lot of more eclectic rock/metal that feels weird or random for random sake. This is a masterclass in toeing that line between being odd and being palatable and it's entirely about subtlety.
As far as whether the relationship is romantic or not, she said "you caught some small death when you were sleepwalking", "small death" referring to the night terrors/ war flashbacks her partner experienced while sleeping, and her comforting him with sex, "le petit morte" (small death) in French meaning orgasm. I could give you an interpretation of most of the lyrics, but it would be a small essay lol
She was in school for an English major before quitting to pursue music, and it really really shows in her lyrics. There are even a few metaphors in the song that were poached from Nabokov, and there's a song off her fourth album that references "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce, both in lyrics and structure, which is an infamously inscrutable work. The same song also references the Cult of Demeter, which I had her confirm during an audience Q&A section of a concert of hers I went to while she was tuning her harp.
This song is utterly amazing and I love to play it fully on the piano. There is no artist I know that is capable of producing repetative melodies without them every getting boring like Joanna is capable of. Have One On Me is also full of repeating melodies (the title track, Go Long, ‘81, Baby Birch, You and Me, Bess, Kingfisher, Does Not Suffice.) She is just amazing and totally unique. Funny you say she is not a fan of repetition, because melodically she is… I am just amazed you had no clue that a) it is harp you hear and not a guitar b) she is a harpist so singing and playing the harp simultaneously, so that is why the harp is so prominent. C) she composes all of her own music.
I saw her perform live at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester UK, she performs all these songs perfectly often with slight unique touches all while playing the harp. Its fascinating watching her play, she has an abundance of charm.
I saw her perform in a small venue in Detroit after this album was released. Her presence & her band were all so otherworldly- it was wild. An unforgettable experience bc my eyes were glued to her, I feel like she & her harp had appeared from another dimension to play the show.
It's amazing that you've done videos for two of my favorite songs ever-like top 10 all-time-this one and Velvet Waltz by Built to Spill. Thanks for the great content!
Really enjoyed your video and musical insights. Sawdust and Diamonds is another wonderful song from this same album. (it happens to actually have a structure.) All 5 songs from this album are masterpieces. Each one is long and intricately composed, and this piece stands out as the most complex one. Some info: Joanna Newsom - Harp + Vocals, which is how the songs are originally composed. The rhythmic dissonance with her vocals also shows how skilled of a performer she is. Van Dyke Parks - Orchestral arrangements, these were added after the original tracks were recorded by newsom. The 2 of them worked closely together to produce the album.
For context as to what the song is about, the album touches on four significant events in her life over four separate songs, and this song ties all of those concepts together, kind of like an overture.
Loving mainly, but not exclusively, Metal and Prog Rock, there has never been an artist capturing my Attention quite like Joanna Newsom. When I first listen to a song of hers after having read some glowing opinions in 2007, I just thought "hmm, that's quite interesting and quirky". I revisited her music after a few weeks, listening to 'Ys' as a whole. I then listened to the whole album about 14 times in as many days, obsessing over it. Like someone wrote in a review, 'Ys" fails at many points as long as you approach it with the conventional expectations in regards of aesthetics, structure and musical craftsmanship. But if you are able to meet it on it's own terms, it may unfold a charme and magic you might not have found in any other music.
Since you enjoyed the album version, you should check out one of the live performances from 2019 or 2020 where it is just Joanna and the harp. You can hear the harp melodies so much more clearly than you can in the album version under all the strings.
I think the focus on voice front and center is especially strong on the YS album in general, so thats a fair point since i think her other works are often a bit more downplayed, but i personally believe that Joannas singing here is very cognisant of being a constant and deliberate solo part over the entire track and album. Its strange but immensely interesting and captivating. I love the density of music and lyrics. Theres so much expression in the whole album, when i first heard it it gave me alot of similar feelings i got from Fleet Foxes, mostly the self titled and Helplessness Blues albums.
I'm still halfway watching your reaction and I'm so happy you listened to this song in particular because it's my favorite one from her. I watched her live many years ago and she's such an amazing soul. Super sweet and humble. Just want to add that it's a harp :D And she's the one playing it. Her first album was a solo with just voice plus harp. She studied creative writing and has a classical background. And she is in love with folk. So you totally got her :) THANK YOU! I loved watching this one
Wow, thank you for this video! I just think Only Skin is not the best track to react to... As you said, it's really dense and it's the one track of Ys that sprawls in an "epic" way (I say "epic" the literary form, not the adjective for something "grand"). Joanna has stated that in Only Skin she was trying to make sense of all the events dealt with in the other four songs, so that's why it may (may!) feel all over the place in a first listen. That said, it does follow a cyclic form, and it goes back to the same sections, but with different lyrics, instrumentation and sometimes even mood. I think that's why the song feels linear, as if always going forward and never looking back, but it does, many times. I think there are only two sections that don't get repeated - the "shallow water" and the "bird hitting the window" sections. I may be wrong, though, that's just off the top of my head. As for the lyrics, they may feel very cryptic and maybe nonsensical, or even reminiscent of the surrealist automatic writing, free association and so forth. But that's definitely not how I read them... There's a lot in there that is worth exploring, there's a lot to find. Joanna is the one lyricist that you can trust that every word has a reason to be there, with poetical force and meaning. For some context, she was a composition major in college but then switched to creative writing before dropping out (to pursue her career, I think). Anyway, she's an incredible writer, I guess it just takes time to get used to her style. Not that you have to, as you said you're not interested in delving into the lyrics for this one. I'm just saying, in case you change your mind -- you won't be sorry! She takes the writing very seriously. I really like the video and your insights, I'm just sorry that Only Skin got picked, as it may be off-putting to listen to in a casual way. That yawn towards the end of the video was so funny and a legit response to a song that apparently underwhelmed or tired you, but still you were respectful and nice about it. I think Cosmia or Emily would have been better tracks to react to, and I'm sure you would be more hooked and excited. Only Skin is a masterpiece, but it just needs more time. I hope you get to listen to Ys some time.
(Erratum: I checked and there are more "sections" that don't get repeated, mostly in the middle part of the song, following the "shallow water" section. My bad!)
Some lovely, lovely folk/freak folk/etc. came out of Nevada City (home of Terry Riley, and the late Utah Phillips) in the late 00's. Thought you'd appreciate the fact that her album after this featured a few musicians who were in several bands with Colin Stetson at the time. Man, such a lovely time ... at least once a week I was at a wonderfully overwhelming show somewhere in the Bay Area seeing all those musicians in one band or another.
Anyone who's had the pleasure of seeing Joanna Newsom live knows it's all about her and the harp (or piano). I've seen her with an orchestra, band and solo, and the latter is best. Ys, is basically a bolt-on orchestra which just happens to be incredibly well done by the talented Van Dyke Parks, but all these songs are great with just a harp.
Hi! I love your channel! Could you analyze some music from the work of Argentine musician Luis Alberto Spinetta. He has a vast discography and beautiful music in many of his works.
It’s just killing me how you keep being confused that the harp sounds like it’s right next to her. 😅 That’s her instrument, this is what she’s known for and studied her entire life! I haven’t finished the video yet, but hopefully you’ll figure this out. Not meaning to sound negative at all, it’s just funny!
I first heard this album in 08 and it completely expanded my musical horizons! I’d never heard anything remotely like it and it got me into both classical music and poetry. Fresh out of studying classical composition, Joanna composed the album on the harp as solo songs then the wonderful Van Dyke Parks composed the orchestral sections over the top. This song is in fact not linear. Instead of a Verse Chorus structure, it follows more of a Section 1-6 then repeat the whole thing with a coda. But she utilises different time pulses, moods and timbres to disguise the repeated sections as new ones. The lyrics are about the overbearing nature of a past relationship of hers and about how she felt that she had to constantly tend to his emotions and breakdowns while her own struggles were either being ignored or seen as far less important than his.
I'm gonna give it another spin to hear that structure. The idea of 3-4 different takes on the same core ideas sounds like something I'd love but I didn't pick up on that at all in my first listen.
I still remember the day I walked in to buy this record on CD, saw the vinyl next to it ( i was like 17, couldnt afford a player at the time) and figured fuck it, this record has a beautiful vinyl cover and inlet, I have to get it. I can picture the stand, the aisle it was in, the weather outside, the aged punk at the til (who still works there! tower records dublin, give it a visit!!!) etc Still spin it regularly at least once a month. I was quite shocked of how much of a departure it was from milk eyed mender, and to this day it still sounds like nothing else.
Really interesting to hear your take. Thanks for this, it was great! I can't help but wonder if you revisited this track after the review, because a song like this that's so dense and long really demands multiple listens. The song seems meandering and improvisational on first listen (which is part of why I thought it was overrated for a long time, even though I was already a huge JNew fan) - but once you've listened multiple times the architecture of the song starts to become clearer. Everything connects to everything else, everything makes perfect sense. (And there actually *are* vocal riffs!)
You should acquaint yourself with more of Newsom's work, it is remarkable music, both intellectually and emotionally stimulating. In my opinion, there are more interesting tracks to hear than this one; there is just as complex, but more mature, and outright relatable, material on her third record, Have One on Me. I recommend the title track, as well as a live performance of her song "Leaving the City", on Jools Holland, from her fourth record Divers. Her rhythmic skills both vocally and on harp seem to be unmatched today by her contemporaries, and she can hit you in the feels like no one else. Thank you for your very thoughtful reaction. It does frustrate me, however, when reactors don't even attempt the most basic research about the artist; I think your reaction and immediate understanding of the music could have been better formed had you known it was a harp and not a guitar. Though the fact that you were unsure is pretty cool.
Just some additional insight into the song: you're totally right about it being her own experience. She composed the harp and wrote the lyrics in an attempt to unify the events behind the 4 other songs of the album. The song brings together her experiences over a single year, the year her music debuted to the public, during which she both toured the States and Europe for the first time, and suffered the loss of loved ones very close to her. The song "Emily" details a fight and reconciliation between she and her sister. The song "Monkey & Bear" articulates her dislike of the touring life. "Sawdust & Diamonds" is about performing, in multiple senses of the word, while discussing the end of a romantic relationship, possibly the loss of a pregnancy, while using the motif of a diorama in which a bunch of stuffed puppets interact. "Cosmia" is about the day she lost her best friend in a car accident, while she was on her first big tour across the country, right after the release of her debut album.
Howdy! I assume somebody has already commented this but I didn’t see it after a quick scroll so I’m gonna step in! Van Dyke Parks is a composer, primarily from late 20th century. I thiiiink he worked with people like Brian eno? Anyway, he arranged the orchestra with newsom’s persistent ‘second opinion’ (she has an episode on Mark Maron’s podcast about struggling to let other people have creative agency). Presumably the reason the guitarp (lol) and vocals stand apart from the orchestra is in fact because they weren’t recorded together, and Joanna has a typical method of mixing with her harp/vocal combo. My guess is she just used it here like always. You stayed away from words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ when describing that decision, but HOT TAKE. I’m comin out here and Latin it down. It was a bad decision! Just perform the damn thing live all together people! To me, at least after many, many listens- and for the record I love this album this being a bad decision isn’t song ruining for me or anything- this decision makes the orchestra feel tacked on. Like literally what it is: a very established composer being commissioned to arrange on top of a pre written song. Maybe others can be more charitable but I can’t hear it any other way unfortunately. She does play with a much smaller band, I think a quartet?, on her ep Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band, and it sounds SOOOOOO good all performed together.
Also have one on me and divers are more smoothly mixed, probably because it was performed together and mic’d separately (with some overdubs of course). It’s just such an odd reality that van dyke parks is on this song in such a way. Idk it feels more like a professional ‘deal’ than an informed artistic decision to me. Lol the more I talk about it the more it sounds like it is in fact song ruining for me 😅 But really I just accept it because of everything else on display here.
Quit whatever you do for a living and read poetry out loud instead. First time I've watched one of your videos... The reading of her lyrics - the rhythm - was astonishing. May I suggest getting up on a stage and playing parts written by William Shakespeare.
@@CriticalReactions Yeah, she's working on a new album. I think the new songs on TH-cam were recorded during a semi-recent live show where she was testing the new ones.
![How Joy Woods Sings My Days [Voice Exploder Ep. 1]](/img/n.gif)
Steve Albini was the one who produced this album, and it was mixed by fellow Drag City labelmate at the time Jim O'Rourke. Van Dyke Parks did the orchestral arrangements on the album on a skeleton of Joanna Newsom's harp and vocals. This was her second album, and she didn't have a lot of money to make it; that's why she went with Steve Albini, who is renowned for his policy of producing music he likes at the rate of pay-what-you-can. Getting Van Dyke Parks on the project was another small miracle, as he was also way out of her budget, but decided to do it anyways as a passion project because he really liked her music. The album would be considered progressive neoclassical contemporary folk/singer-songwriter, if you had to put it in a box. The rhythmic complexity comes from joanna's predilection for polyrhythmic harp playing (inspired by West African kora music), shifting time signatures, and tempo changes, as well as her heavy use of syncopation. It's certainly something you have to get used to when listening to her music, but isn't a turn-off or deal-breaker even if you aren't into that kind of thing, since her music is all very organic and emotionally poignant. It's the perfect blend of technicality and expressiveness.
Just wait until you hear "Emily", or "Monkey and Bear", or "Have One on Me", or "Good Intentions Paving Co.", or "Baby Birch", or "Sapokanikan", or "Waltz of the 101st Lightborne", or "Time, As a Symptom", or ... you get the picture.
Also "Kingfisher," "Go Long," "California," "Anecdotes," and "Leaving the City."
Neither of you said "On A Good Day", "81", "Peach Plum Pear", "The Book of Right On", or "Bridges and Balloons"... shocking
...or "Colleen", or "Cosmia", or "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie", or "A Pin-Light Bent", or "Flying a Kite"...
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This whole album is just jaw-dropping. Glad you got to listen to part of it. Btw It is a harp and believe it or not Joanna is the one playing it as well as singing
The harp is this dominant because she play it. She sings and plays harp at the same time. Have to check out some live performances…!!!
It's interesting you noted that Joanna's harp-playing sounds somewhat not harp-like, and leans toward almost sounding like a guitar at some points. Joanna started writing and composing on the harp with assistance from her teacher at age 6, as she was learning. Her sound has always been very opposite to what I think a lot of us think of harp music sounding like. She was also much more inspired by African harp traditions as opposed to classical harp we tend to hear more in the states. But her biggest musical influences are country & folk musicians: Karen Dalton, Joni Mitchell, and I feel like her harp comes through a bit as a guitar sound in some of her music because she's employing Appalachian and folk guitar traditions in her music. I've never seen harp sheet music like hers, it's fascinating the choices she makes composing her instrument
Thank you for an awesome job looking at such a complex song on just a single listen. On the specifics of how the production sounds, here's a direct quote from an interview with Joanna:
"I've sort of always been really obsessed with the idea of balancing elements out, especially in collaboration. So I was working with Van Dyke on these kind of sumptuous, lush, cinematic, very romantic, and slightly Copeland-esque orchestral arrangements, and it was really important to me that at the core of this record would then be a recording that basically sounded like you were sitting in a room with me. I didn't want to lose that intimacy and the immediacy of the harp and vocal performance. And I feel like Steve [Albini] is the person who - he basically delivers reality, but the beautiful version of reality--- ---And so I wanted him to record it, but then I wanted Jim O'Rourke to mix it because I wanted this third element. Because I feel that the way Jim O'Rourke mixes records would be a strong reference to Van Dyke Parks' early stuff and Randy Newman's early stuff, and this kind of early 70s way of treating an orchestra that doesn't happen very much now. Kind of the opposite of lush, cinematic orchestral treatment. One in which the individual textures and voices and character of each instrument exists and sort of rises up in these little vignettes, very stylized, and I feel that's how Jim mixes."
This is one of my favorite albums of the 2010s. I've wanted you to react to Sawdust & Diamonds from this album for a while as it's my favorite Joanna Newsom song, but I can't be upset that Only Skin got selected because it's awesome too. I just love how Newsom's music, especially on her first three albums (the other Newsom song you heard was from her 4th and latest), has this almost ancient quality to it. Part of it is in the folk simplicity that evokes such old and primal musical traditions; but the lyrics too seem completely out of time, like they could've been written in almost any prior century. I also love how the music itself ebbs and flows with the emotional currents of the lyrics; it feels stream-of-conscious but without the more incoherent aspects of that mode of writing/composition. It's also dreamlike but with enough tethers to reality that even if you can't follow the precise meaning from moment to moment it still feels significant on an aesthetic, emotional, intuitive level. There's so many surprises and odd touches, but not to the point they feel like pure chaos or done randomly for the sake of surprise. There's also a ton of emotion, but it's frequently ambivalent and hard to definitively pin down to one feeling. Anyway, I'll stop gushing, but Newsom and this album particularly is one of my favorite musical discoveries in recent years. Thanks to the person who recommended this. Would love to see you react to this whole album.
EDIT: Funnily enough I wrote this comment before listening to your analysis. Amazing how we touched on so many of the same ideas! As for the production, it's actually pretty common for folk to have the vocals recorded to feel like they're extremely close to the listener. That probably comes from the tradition of live folk performances in which a singer would often be sitting and singing for a small audience that was also right in front of them. Obviously that changed once acts like Dylan got huge and started playing at huge venues, but the older folk tradition was different, and even Dylan's "pure folk" era was produced like this. Her instrument is definitely a harp.
EDIT 2: Her lyrical style is indeed quite dense, but not indecipherable if you take your time to linger over phrases/metaphors and grasp onto the overarching themes without getting too lost in the themes. You got quite a bit of it too; it is indeed about a complex, volatile relationship in which her lover suffers from PTSD. She tries to love and be there for him but he's more detached and distant, perhaps because of his trauma. I don't normally recommend Genius pages on lyrical analysis, but the Genius page for this song is pretty good, especially in how it points out many of the allusions and references. I caught some of them myself but there's quite a few. Newsom's style seems heavily influenced by Nabokov and Faulkner, two of my favorite authors, and apparently she even acknowledged taking the image of "hands in your pockets" from Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, which is easily one of my top 5 favorite novels (Faulkner is very much stream-of-consciousness turned up to 11 and makes Newsom seem like AC/DC by comparison!).
Dream-like but tethered" is the perfect way to describe *every aspect* of this track. The music, the lyrics, the feelings. And I'm glad you brought up the "odd choices but not feeling random" because that is exactly what I think is missing in a lot of more eclectic rock/metal that feels weird or random for random sake. This is a masterclass in toeing that line between being odd and being palatable and it's entirely about subtlety.
small correction: it's from 2006.
Hold me close, cooed the dove
Who was stuffed, now, with sawdust and diamonds
As far as whether the relationship is romantic or not, she said "you caught some small death when you were sleepwalking", "small death" referring to the night terrors/ war flashbacks her partner experienced while sleeping, and her comforting him with sex, "le petit morte" (small death) in French meaning orgasm. I could give you an interpretation of most of the lyrics, but it would be a small essay lol
She was in school for an English major before quitting to pursue music, and it really really shows in her lyrics. There are even a few metaphors in the song that were poached from Nabokov, and there's a song off her fourth album that references "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce, both in lyrics and structure, which is an infamously inscrutable work. The same song also references the Cult of Demeter, which I had her confirm during an audience Q&A section of a concert of hers I went to while she was tuning her harp.
The question is at 59:03
th-cam.com/video/VDFpi4xLgGU/w-d-xo.html
please write an essay that we can read :)
Wish you would and share with me.
This song is utterly amazing and I love to play it fully on the piano. There is no artist I know that is capable of producing repetative melodies without them every getting boring like Joanna is capable of. Have One On Me is also full of repeating melodies (the title track, Go Long, ‘81, Baby Birch, You and Me, Bess, Kingfisher, Does Not Suffice.) She is just amazing and totally unique. Funny you say she is not a fan of repetition, because melodically she is…
I am just amazed you had no clue that a) it is harp you hear and not a guitar b) she is a harpist so singing and playing the harp simultaneously, so that is why the harp is so prominent. C) she composes all of her own music.
I saw her perform live at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester UK, she performs all these songs perfectly often with slight unique touches all while playing the harp. Its fascinating watching her play, she has an abundance of charm.
I saw her perform in a small venue in Detroit after this album was released. Her presence & her band were all so otherworldly- it was wild. An unforgettable experience bc my eyes were glued to her, I feel like she & her harp had appeared from another dimension to play the show.
It's amazing that you've done videos for two of my favorite songs ever-like top 10 all-time-this one and Velvet Waltz by Built to Spill. Thanks for the great content!
Really enjoyed your video and musical insights.
Sawdust and Diamonds is another wonderful song from this same album. (it happens to actually have a structure.)
All 5 songs from this album are masterpieces. Each one is long and intricately composed, and this piece stands out as the most complex one.
Some info:
Joanna Newsom - Harp + Vocals, which is how the songs are originally composed. The rhythmic dissonance with her vocals also shows how skilled of a performer she is.
Van Dyke Parks - Orchestral arrangements, these were added after the original tracks were recorded by newsom.
The 2 of them worked closely together to produce the album.
One of my all time fave songs!
Excited for this one
Her album after this one, Have One On Me, is unbelievable. One of the best of the 2010's.
For context as to what the song is about, the album touches on four significant events in her life over four separate songs, and this song ties all of those concepts together, kind of like an overture.
That's not what overture means
This is a quietly riveting analysis. Has me giddy. Thoughtful. And deserved, I call you as entitled to this. A rare gift from a fan such as I.
Love Joanna Newsom/ Yes, she writes the music and lyrics,, "with accompanying orchestral arrangements by Van Dyke Park".
Gotcha. So she writes the vocal, harp, and chordal aspects and then a song is written around that. Awesome!
Loving mainly, but not exclusively, Metal and Prog Rock, there has never been an artist capturing my Attention quite like Joanna Newsom. When I first listen to a song of hers after having read some glowing opinions in 2007, I just thought "hmm, that's quite interesting and quirky". I revisited her music after a few weeks, listening to 'Ys' as a whole. I then listened to the whole album about 14 times in as many days, obsessing over it. Like someone wrote in a review, 'Ys" fails at many points as long as you approach it with the conventional expectations in regards of aesthetics, structure and musical craftsmanship. But if you are able to meet it on it's own terms, it may unfold a charme and magic you might not have found in any other music.
Since you enjoyed the album version, you should check out one of the live performances from 2019 or 2020 where it is just Joanna and the harp. You can hear the harp melodies so much more clearly than you can in the album version under all the strings.
I think the focus on voice front and center is especially strong on the YS album in general, so thats a fair point since i think her other works are often a bit more downplayed, but i personally believe that Joannas singing here is very cognisant of being a constant and deliberate solo part over the entire track and album. Its strange but immensely interesting and captivating. I love the density of music and lyrics. Theres so much expression in the whole album, when i first heard it it gave me alot of similar feelings i got from Fleet Foxes, mostly the self titled and Helplessness Blues albums.
she's the best musician of this century.
Indeed she is...
if you listen to another Joanna song please let it be the Ys Street Band version of Cosmia!!! or Have One On Me - that one is incredible as well.
YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES YES
Ys
YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YSYS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS YS
I'm still halfway watching your reaction and I'm so happy you listened to this song in particular because it's my favorite one from her. I watched her live many years ago and she's such an amazing soul. Super sweet and humble.
Just want to add that it's a harp :D And she's the one playing it. Her first album was a solo with just voice plus harp. She studied creative writing and has a classical background. And she is in love with folk. So you totally got her :) THANK YOU! I loved watching this one
Wow, thank you for this video! I just think Only Skin is not the best track to react to... As you said, it's really dense and it's the one track of Ys that sprawls in an "epic" way (I say "epic" the literary form, not the adjective for something "grand"). Joanna has stated that in Only Skin she was trying to make sense of all the events dealt with in the other four songs, so that's why it may (may!) feel all over the place in a first listen. That said, it does follow a cyclic form, and it goes back to the same sections, but with different lyrics, instrumentation and sometimes even mood. I think that's why the song feels linear, as if always going forward and never looking back, but it does, many times. I think there are only two sections that don't get repeated - the "shallow water" and the "bird hitting the window" sections. I may be wrong, though, that's just off the top of my head.
As for the lyrics, they may feel very cryptic and maybe nonsensical, or even reminiscent of the surrealist automatic writing, free association and so forth. But that's definitely not how I read them... There's a lot in there that is worth exploring, there's a lot to find. Joanna is the one lyricist that you can trust that every word has a reason to be there, with poetical force and meaning. For some context, she was a composition major in college but then switched to creative writing before dropping out (to pursue her career, I think). Anyway, she's an incredible writer, I guess it just takes time to get used to her style. Not that you have to, as you said you're not interested in delving into the lyrics for this one. I'm just saying, in case you change your mind -- you won't be sorry! She takes the writing very seriously.
I really like the video and your insights, I'm just sorry that Only Skin got picked, as it may be off-putting to listen to in a casual way. That yawn towards the end of the video was so funny and a legit response to a song that apparently underwhelmed or tired you, but still you were respectful and nice about it. I think Cosmia or Emily would have been better tracks to react to, and I'm sure you would be more hooked and excited. Only Skin is a masterpiece, but it just needs more time. I hope you get to listen to Ys some time.
(Erratum: I checked and there are more "sections" that don't get repeated, mostly in the middle part of the song, following the "shallow water" section. My bad!)
Only skin IS the best track
Some lovely, lovely folk/freak folk/etc. came out of Nevada City (home of Terry Riley, and the late Utah Phillips) in the late 00's.
Thought you'd appreciate the fact that her album after this featured a few musicians who were in several bands with Colin Stetson at the time. Man, such a lovely time ... at least once a week I was at a wonderfully overwhelming show somewhere in the Bay Area seeing all those musicians in one band or another.
Anyone who's had the pleasure of seeing Joanna Newsom live knows it's all about her and the harp (or piano). I've seen her with an orchestra, band and solo, and the latter is best. Ys, is basically a bolt-on orchestra which just happens to be incredibly well done by the talented Van Dyke Parks, but all these songs are great with just a harp.
Hi! I love your channel!
Could you analyze some music from the work of Argentine musician Luis Alberto Spinetta. He has a vast discography and beautiful music in many of his works.
It’s just killing me how you keep being confused that the harp sounds like it’s right next to her. 😅 That’s her instrument, this is what she’s known for and studied her entire life! I haven’t finished the video yet, but hopefully you’ll figure this out. Not meaning to sound negative at all, it’s just funny!
I couldn't have clicked any faster, this is one of my most played albums.
I first heard this album in 08 and it completely expanded my musical horizons! I’d never heard anything remotely like it and it got me into both classical music and poetry.
Fresh out of studying classical composition, Joanna composed the album on the harp as solo songs then the wonderful Van Dyke Parks composed the orchestral sections over the top.
This song is in fact not linear. Instead of a Verse Chorus structure, it follows more of a Section 1-6 then repeat the whole thing with a coda. But she utilises different time pulses, moods and timbres to disguise the repeated sections as new ones.
The lyrics are about the overbearing nature of a past relationship of hers and about how she felt that she had to constantly tend to his emotions and breakdowns while her own struggles were either being ignored or seen as far less important than his.
I'm gonna give it another spin to hear that structure. The idea of 3-4 different takes on the same core ideas sounds like something I'd love but I didn't pick up on that at all in my first listen.
14:45
we've all been there
I still remember the day I walked in to buy this record on CD, saw the vinyl next to it ( i was like 17, couldnt afford a player at the time) and figured fuck it, this record has a beautiful vinyl cover and inlet, I have to get it. I can picture the stand, the aisle it was in, the weather outside, the aged punk at the til (who still works there! tower records dublin, give it a visit!!!) etc
Still spin it regularly at least once a month. I was quite shocked of how much of a departure it was from milk eyed mender, and to this day it still sounds like nothing else.
One of my all time favorite albums and songs!
Really interesting to hear your take. Thanks for this, it was great! I can't help but wonder if you revisited this track after the review, because a song like this that's so dense and long really demands multiple listens. The song seems meandering and improvisational on first listen (which is part of why I thought it was overrated for a long time, even though I was already a huge JNew fan) - but once you've listened multiple times the architecture of the song starts to become clearer. Everything connects to everything else, everything makes perfect sense. (And there actually *are* vocal riffs!)
I enjoyed your review of this song, one of my favorites!
Simply wonderful all together!
Once again: her voice really reminds frequently of Björck's
i adore joanna. i hope she comes back. hasn't been a new one for a long time.
She is incredible! Настоящий гений!
This is my fav song of all
Time. 💕💕💕💕💕
You get it, man.
The guitar is always present and important because she’s very much a harpist :-) Good call.
"The sheer quantity of lyrics....."
*Makes horrified face and forgets what he was saying*
Listen to Ys in its entirety with the lyrics in front of you. I'm sorry in advance for ruining all other music for you forever.
Also would love to see you talk about sawdust and diamonds since you mentioned it
You should acquaint yourself with more of Newsom's work, it is remarkable music, both intellectually and emotionally stimulating. In my opinion, there are more interesting tracks to hear than this one; there is just as complex, but more mature, and outright relatable, material on her third record, Have One on Me. I recommend the title track, as well as a live performance of her song "Leaving the City", on Jools Holland, from her fourth record Divers. Her rhythmic skills both vocally and on harp seem to be unmatched today by her contemporaries, and she can hit you in the feels like no one else. Thank you for your very thoughtful reaction. It does frustrate me, however, when reactors don't even attempt the most basic research about the artist; I think your reaction and immediate understanding of the music could have been better formed had you known it was a harp and not a guitar. Though the fact that you were unsure is pretty cool.
Just some additional insight into the song: you're totally right about it being her own experience. She composed the harp and wrote the lyrics in an attempt to unify the events behind the 4 other songs of the album. The song brings together her experiences over a single year, the year her music debuted to the public, during which she both toured the States and Europe for the first time, and suffered the loss of loved ones very close to her. The song "Emily" details a fight and reconciliation between she and her sister. The song "Monkey & Bear" articulates her dislike of the touring life. "Sawdust & Diamonds" is about performing, in multiple senses of the word, while discussing the end of a romantic relationship, possibly the loss of a pregnancy, while using the motif of a diorama in which a bunch of stuffed puppets interact. "Cosmia" is about the day she lost her best friend in a car accident, while she was on her first big tour across the country, right after the release of her debut album.
@@ericdoce4974 where did you find this information? I would love read or hear more about it..
@@kirstenbush6762 she’s spoken about it in several interviews, lemme see if I can find exact sources.
She only plays harp (and piano, too!) - as far as I know she doesn't play guitar. But anyway, I enjoyed this video! x
Howdy! I assume somebody has already commented this but I didn’t see it after a quick scroll so I’m gonna step in!
Van Dyke Parks is a composer, primarily from late 20th century. I thiiiink he worked with people like Brian eno? Anyway, he arranged the orchestra with newsom’s persistent ‘second opinion’ (she has an episode on Mark Maron’s podcast about struggling to let other people have creative agency).
Presumably the reason the guitarp (lol) and vocals stand apart from the orchestra is in fact because they weren’t recorded together, and Joanna has a typical method of mixing with her harp/vocal combo. My guess is she just used it here like always.
You stayed away from words like ‘good’ and ‘bad’ when describing that decision, but HOT TAKE. I’m comin out here and Latin it down. It was a bad decision! Just perform the damn thing live all together people!
To me, at least after many, many listens- and for the record I love this album this being a bad decision isn’t song ruining for me or anything- this decision makes the orchestra feel tacked on. Like literally what it is: a very established composer being commissioned to arrange on top of a pre written song. Maybe others can be more charitable but I can’t hear it any other way unfortunately.
She does play with a much smaller band, I think a quartet?, on her ep Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band, and it sounds SOOOOOO good all performed together.
Also have one on me and divers are more smoothly mixed, probably because it was performed together and mic’d separately (with some overdubs of course).
It’s just such an odd reality that van dyke parks is on this song in such a way. Idk it feels more like a professional ‘deal’ than an informed artistic decision to me. Lol the more I talk about it the more it sounds like it is in fact song ruining for me 😅
But really I just accept it because of everything else on display here.
Quit whatever you do for a living and read poetry out loud instead.
First time I've watched one of your videos... The reading of her lyrics - the rhythm - was astonishing.
May I suggest getting up on a stage and playing parts written by William Shakespeare.
Thanks for the compliment! If I could find a job that was legit just reading poetry I would totally do that for that living. 😄
A toothless hound dog, choking on a feather…
This is an interesting album I have heard before, but not something I would play much.
How would you know?
Quality talent in a deep sea of fake.
Shame that you spoke over the best part of the song.
sad she doesn't makes music anymore...
Wait, didn't she drop a new song a month or two ago?
@@CriticalReactions Yeah, she's working on a new album. I think the new songs on TH-cam were recorded during a semi-recent live show where she was testing the new ones.