Reviews by kuvien

The organ playing and the singing have a kind of religious intensity to them, which I guess is appropriate for an ode to Venus.

Side A is an epic exploration of how one can soulfully rock out within a Christian liturgical framework, and after that, Polish Van Morrison stumbles in and takes over.

This is good stuff, but he’s so much better when he sings in Polish. English just brings him down to a more pedestrian level, and he loses some of his expressive voice. This is good white-boy soul, though, with a lot of complexity without being inaccessible. This album’s magic is all in the last track--the title track--a sprawling organ piece with both martial and psychedelic touches. A weird combination, but it works. What a song to sing along to, letting it all loose!

Kantele, accordion, fiddle, female vocals. Everything I want to hear in traditional folk music. This one's excellently done, steeped in the sounds of another time, another place. Accessible as folk-dance music, mysterious as rune singing.

I guess what's great about this one is that it can get really avant-garde, grating, and discordant in spots and then ease into a post-rock vibe for a while, keeping you guessing throughout and teasing your ears in many different directions. A lot of seasoning here.

I discovered for myself and fell in love instantly many years ago with a little-known Irish folk album called Skara Brae by a group with the same name. The music is magical, from another time and place, but I never thought to explore further. After all, the band is a one-and-done group. I revisited the album recently and remembered that the band was made up for the most part of siblings. So I decided to check out one album by one of the brothers, and another by the sister. They sound nothing alike, strangely, though I can hear elements of Skara Brae in both their "solo" works. This album splits its time between English and Irish Gaelic, and the tunes have some gripping storytelling, both witty and tragic, depending on the tale. Like with some of the tracks on Skara Brae, the harpsichord takes center stage here. My favorite moments are the long stretches of female vocals without instrument accompaniment.

Another one of those 70s Italian film scores that snuck its way into my collection via user RYM lists. I’ve yet to see any of these slasher movies, but I can imagine from the music that they’re probably pretty campy / great. This music teeters between the symphonic and snyths overlaid with minimal guitar. It’s all about mood. The second half of the album gets a bit spookier, with more unsettling sounds and vocals.

What is the marble index? It is the ratio of dreaming to waking, of rain to snow, of day to night. It is the borderlands of all those things: evening, slush, half-consciousness. Understanding that night always falls and ice always forms over your sleeping, marble form, and because you are unmoving, the music must move. It whirls around you like a quiet tempest, full of fractured beauty, like snowflakes.

Dreary cave winds precipitate a noisome concoction poured into the ear to induce forgetfulness of everything but death. This is Lethe water, or Styx water. Take your pick. This is not your polite Nico.

Before me lies the dark sea whose relentless current causes the surf to wash over my feet. Behind me rises the endless, barren desert. And here I am, stuck in the middle of a shipwreck with Nico.

The musical manifestation of the phrase "a day late, a dollar short".

And he's from Michigan, too. lol

Another perfect EP from everyone's favorite quirky little harpist.

No one sings "bitch" the way Joanna does. So cute, yet so cutting. Since this is an EP, some of these tracks appear on her studio album.

A debut gem among debut gems. This is probably her most comprehensible album, the lyrics sung more clearly, though the subject matter is as inscrutable as any Newsom album, with messages both hidden and clear like the constellations.

I can't believe an audience* was so mean to beautiful Joanna that she walked off stage in the middle of her set! I bet the Twilight and the Mist indignantly followed her.

*not the audience on this bootleg

One wonderful thing about Newsom is that you can take her music lyrically or musically, or both. It's up to you, depending on how you like your music, or what kind of mood you're in when you return to any of her perfect albums of intricate music brocade. Her vocals chirp, whistle, and sing like a bird, her lyrics explore subverted faery and mythological themes (even in the mundane), her music expresses poetic beauty in the form of her liquid harp.

A faerie gumdrop gingerbread house, an illuminated manuscript of storybook poetry. Newsom isn't content to merely sing the words; she decorates them in a spring cleaning of her heart.

Though this has nothing do with the music, per se, I just want to praise the vinyl packaging for this album. Instead of the lyrics being printed on the sleeve or in some kind of booklet (which is nice, too, of course), the lyrics are printed on cards of different sizes with beautiful, otherworldly art on the flip sides. It's a beautiful album enjoying pride of place on my vinyl display shelf. As for the music, it's everything we love about Newsom: her whimsy, her quirkiness, her magic, and her faerie mind that simultaneously demonstrates deep, measured, philosophical thought and childlike thoughtlessness. Every song is waking dream of poetry. Yeah...I think I'm turning into a Newsom stan.

Instant boredom.