Joanna Newsom: Ys - Album Review
When “Dancer in the Dark” saw the light of day in 1999, it drew as much ardent applause as trenchant vitriol. Devotees hailed the emotionally charged social commentary and its experimental realism, while disparagers hissed at the fatalistic sentimentality and its dubious provocation. Despite the polarizing views, two things the critics did agree upon: Björk delivered a memorable performance, and this is probably one of those love-it-or-hate-its with nothing in between. My reaction to the film was of torn ambivalence: the urgency of story seems genuine but vicious and vengeful; the condemnation may well be justified but the sneering is almost callous to the point of distraction. I remember having left the movie theater with eyes red, and a bemused resentment of Von Trier’s unmitigated manipulation.
Funny how this movie comes to mind as I listen to Ys. Besides the inevitable vocal comparison between Newsom and Björk, both works constitute something that lovers love and haters hate. Much has been penned about the cryptic title sharing the namesake of the submerged Breton city in Celtic myth, or its sparse 5 songs stretching to over 56 minutes of playtime, or the enviable production team comprised of Jim O’rourke, Van Dyke Parks and Steve Albini. Even the artwork on the album sleeve is the source of many fervent discussions. 
Since I have little to contribute to these departments, let’s just put on the record.
“Emily” is a familial psalm dedicated to Newsom’s sister, strewn with flapping meadowlarks and chim-choo-rees over fields of blossoming poppies against a yawning sky. The gossipy townsfolk seem to have driven the brave Emily sailing her great ship away, who once taught Joanna that a meteor is really a meteoroid in disguise caused by the meteorite, a lesson in Astronomy that’s also the closest thing resembling a refrain in this 12-minutes opener. Newsom paints a serene and idyllic landscape, with haze of vehemence floating in the air and untold secrets bubbling in the undercurrent.
The fabulistic “Monkey & Bear” plunges right into the rabbit hole and takes us to Joanna in Whimsyland: under Monkey’s persuasion, Monkey and Bear escape the confinement of Man looking for an open country a-steeped in milk and honey. Even though the hills are groaning with excess like a table ceaselessly being set, they still got bills to pay. “C’mon, will you dance, my darling?”, cajoles Monkey. So with the courage of a clown, Bear (her name is Ursula) dances to the organ for the pleasure of shrieking children, who’d throw coins at her feet and recoil in terror. When rumor has it that Bear has been sneaking away to the seaside to bathe, it greatly displeases the abusive Monkey, who thus plots grudgingly for her humiliation. At the end of tale, does Ursula wake up as Edna Pontellier and finds her ultimate freedom at the ocean?
“Sawdust and Diamonds”, the third installment on Ys, the only piece stripped of any orchestration, accompanied entirely by Newsom’s vocal chord and the harp strings, is my personal favorite. The placidity breathes so clearly and effortlessly under Newsom’s eloquent fingers where the strings pour and gush and flow with rapport, you’d almost begin to understand the indignant disappointment of some longtime fans, who fear that Van Dyke Park’s orchestration might have impaled Newsom’s timbre and daubed her subtlety by rubbing excessive watercolor into her oil painting. To be fair, Parks does add some exotic and vivid colors that Newsom might have overlooked on her palette, which is a good thing. But I regress - the story of “Sawdust and Diamonds” is to be shared but not to be told; it’s a secret code for her to remember and not for us to understand. Some accuse her of self-indulgence and irrelevancy, but if she ever does meander in a flight of fancy, it’s impossible not to closely follow her on those leafed and winding pathways. With Ys playing on my CD player, it’s quite difficult to concentrate on what I’m writing. Her poetry holds your attention, your breath so dearly and refuses to fade into the background. I love the unflinching fierceness as she scintillates:
I wasn’t born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight
No, I was all horns and thorns, sprung out fully formed,
knock-kneed and upright
So: enough of this terror
We deserve to know light
And grow evermore lighter and lighter
You would have seen me through
But I could not undo that desire
There’s something earnest and daring in the way she enunciates “desire” and says it over and over again. I love it.
“Only Skin” is a mysterious island haunted by ghosts, drowned, charred, ill, starved, where memories of the living console and torment the dead. Are they stranded, desperately waiting for help, or hiding, as fugitives, in the shoal from the black airplane? Are they mother and son? Man and woman? Is there more than one woman? This is the most enigmatic and embracive piece of the album; the primed orchestra accompanies the incoherent, intermittent storyline throughout unapologetically, with recurrent themes of loss and mortality, love and yearning. Think of it as a soundtrack to an insomniac nightmare, with vivid and bizarre imageries of life, sensual and supernatural, and death, ominous and orgasmic. The essence of the mystery seems to lie in being a woman, the happiness of a woman, what is it a woman does, and the love of a woman. Or two.
Chuang-Tzu, the Taoist philosopher once fell asleep under a tree and dreamed he was a butterfly. He flew through the fields and the forests with such abandon that he woke up in an utter confusion: is he a butterfly dreaming as a wingless biped or is he indeed Chuang-Tzu that had a dream as Lepidoptera? In “Cosmia” Newsom could very well be a moth who fears the night but nevertheless dances with her dear friend beneath the porch light. Even should it bring endless grieving of dusted hearts and singed wings. With a turbulent outburst of yearning Ys comes to a sorrowful and climactic completion.
Is Joanna Newsom ambitious or pretentious? If she has an ambition, Ys has quite sufficiently fulfilled it. If she’s pretending, well I doubt any lesser talent would be able to pull it off with what she’s done with Ys.
Hey I’ve just finished my first blog entry! Thanks for reading, and welcome. I’m on my way to get “Milk-Eyed Mender”.
Popularity: 25%