Ys

Today's album is like indie folk maybe? The songs are full of metaphor, string accompaniment (sometimes dipping their toes into jazz a bit), and weird time signatures. It's like dropping acid at a Renaissance Fair. It's like if Joni Mitchell and Bjork had a kid.

The lyrics for the song Monkey & Bear are fucked...

"Someone had told him the bear'd been sneaking away
To the seaside caverns, to bathe
And the thought troubled the monkey
For he was afraid of spelunking
Down in those caves, also afraid what the
Village people would say if they saw the bear in that state
Lolling and splashing obscenely
Well, it seemed irrational, really
Washing that face, washing that matted and flea-bit pelt
In some sea-spit-shine old kelp dripping with brine
But monkey just laughed, and he muttered
When she comes back, Ursula will be bursting with pride
Till I jump up saying, You've been rolling in muck
Saying, You smell of garbage and grime"

That's too complicated for me. I don't like music where you need a PhD to understand what they're singing about. This is music for hipsters to listen to and analyze to death while drinking a mocha-choca-chino latte 100%.

This was just way too weird for me.

Favourite songs: Emily, Sawdust and Diamonds

Least favourite songs: Monkey & Bear, Cosmia

2/5

This was pretty brutal. Desperate need of a producer/editor. Chopped down to about 3 minutes for each song and with some serious reworking, there's some good ideas here. Hard to figure out how this album made the list though.

Folktales and poetry. I enjoyed this way more than I ever expected to. Favorite song is Emily.

Newsom expertly weaves imagery like brocade, bringing anecdote, metaphor, allegory, and literary allusion into her beautiful harp music, couching all her charming storytelling in a most excellent, educated diction that cannot help but delight the enlightened listener as she renders the mundane magical. If other music is homeless-by-choice people picking off crows in the barn for their supper, this music is a family in a warm house sitting down to a dinner of lamb.

Oh my god she never shuts up.

2/5

Very strange, sounds like stream of consciousness lyrics over old-fashioned improvised backing music. Not my thing at all, but interesting in its own wee way.

Great arrangements and I usually like weird stuff, but I found this irritating as hell. She sings like Bjork and Kate Bush in a joint constipation therapy session.

Definitely to her benefit that I put this on as cooking music rather than working or walking, but May It Please The Court, I enjoyed this a lot

I really like the tone and feeling of the record, all the harp is entrancing and the harpist is fucking shredding the whole time. The lyrics are dense and I can't seem to penetrate them on this listen through. Cosmia I could see Katie covering.

Sounds SO much like Anais Mitchel. It's gorgeous. What wonderful sound.

After hearing her first album years ago, I kind of wrote her off and never tuned back in again. Her voice simply wasn't for me. Taking the time to listen to this though, all these years later, I can see why she has a strong and devoted following. Certainly an iconoclast with her own sound. Brave stuff. Reminds me in parts of Kate Bush, Bjork, and Fiona Apple, all of whom I'm a big fan of. I also really enjoyed the arrangements by Van Dyke Parks. But like Van Dyke Parks' solo records, again, it boils down to the vocals bringing down the whole experience for me. I can see perhaps one song like this working as the showcase/centerpiece of an album, but an entire album of it is exhausting.

Fuck, I really like this, and I was not expecting that AT ALL. I mean, five songs all longer than what I consider casually listenable? Seems like something I'm destined to be annoyed or at least bored with, but I really adored this. Firstly, it's gorgeous both musically and lyrically, with the strings really meshing well with the weirder choices such as a mouth harp and banjo. In that way it reminds me of a Leonard Cohen album, but I'd say the lyrics are far more abstract than Cohen's works, but it still really works. I like that there s no regular song structure yet it returns to the same line every few minutes to bring the song into its own orbit and not let it stray too far outwards and become a mess. I don't know if I'll go out of my way to listen to most of these songs separately due to their length, but as a whole album this is certainly up there as something great. I will admit her vocals remind me a little bit of whoever sings "Dance Monkey", but not really annoyed at it here. Then again, I never found the vocals on that track too annoying either, so perhaps I'm the one broken. Any way, amazing album, truly unexpected.