KWCW

Joanna Newsom - Ys
(Drag City, 2006)

Joanna Newsom’s first album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was quite good. Her stories were compelling, her instrumentation unconventional and pleasant, and her voice, if nothing more, unique. Her follow-up, Ys, despite having only five songs, is something far grander, improving upon all of her qualities as a musician while changing the focus of both her music and her songwriting in general.

Seconds into the album’s first track, “Emily,” Ys’s dramatic change of sound becomes apparent as soon as the orchestra makes its presence known. While Newsom’s voice remains the focus of the music, the strings, arranged by Brian Wilson collaborator and musician Van Dyke Parks, take her once-minimal harp-and-vocals approach and instead place it in the aural equivalent of Cinemascope and Technicolor. The strings move around her harp and her voice, animating the music wonderfully.

Additionally, her singing voice - a source of controversy since the beginning of her career as a singer-songwriter - has clearly improved. Her singing is no longer anywhere near as raw as it was on either her first two EPs or her first album, yet her voice still feels more than adequate as a method of delivering these songs. It’s an improvement likely to help win her many new fans with this album.

As a whole, Ys is a stunning record and easily among the best of the year. The songs are epic, as proven by the seventeen-minute “Only Skin,” yet still intimate and fascinating. It’s a remarkable second album and proof that there is much ground yet to be explored in the world of experimental folk.

5/5
-Andrew Hall