Joanna Newsom is one of the most polarizing figures in all of music today. She?s an artist who?s records are loved or hated, by most. There?s people who ?don?t get? her and people who almost certainly like her to be contrary. Dave Eggers, in talking about her first proper record ?Milk Eyed Mender? which along with it?s follow-up ?Ys? were both among the best reviewed and most debated of all records of the decade, said ?it makes my heart feel stout, enables me, with my eyes, to breathe fire? while Entertainment Weekly?s Whitney Pastorek said that after buying the record and hearing those comments she ?listened to it twice and decided to throw it in the river because I thought that?d be a nice place for it to go to die?, probably describing in brief the feelings that many share. 

Newsom is, to be sure, an oddity. She plays the harp and sings in a manner that she herself called ?unteachable? and has been often called ?child-like? (a description she?s said to revile) and derided often as off-key and irritating. Her fans (and I?d count myself among them) would more likely consider her voice an asset: the untrained rawness of it lends a certain verve and often an odd grace to the best of her work. 

At times even her fiercest fans can be a bit hard pressed to talk of her without paying lip service to those who might not be inclined to enjoy. The Guardian, in their five star review of Ys called it perhaps ?the most off-putting album of the year? before relenting to say that it was also possibly ?the most astonishing?. If nothing else her music is something that invokes an emotional response.

With this in mind, I thought it to be an interesting idea to take a listen to her discography, from her early pre-fame Eps (which first caught the eye of Will Oldham, leading to a tour and her signing with Drag City records) to her two full lengths and later EP, in anticipation of her upcoming (and by her fans, feverishly anticipated) triple EP ?Have One on Me?.




Her discography begins with the 2002 EP ?Walnut Whales? which she distributed, mostly to friends, on a cassette tape. It debuts several songs that would later go on to appear on her full length debut ?Milk Eyed Mender? but to my ear in most cases these songs, including ?En Gallop? and ?The Book of Right On? are more shakily arranged, most listlessly performed and lacking, on some level, the charm of the later versions. On the other hand you have an audacious first take on ?Peach Plum Pear? which shows her stretching her voice and sound in a way almost reminiscent less of her folk peers and more of perhaps a Yoko Ono. It?s an interesting take but with everything on the record it?s not quite indicative of her later efforts with the same material. 

There are a few songs that appear nowhere else: ?Erin?, ?Flying a Kite? and ?The Fray? but none are anything worth seeking out for anyone outside of the biggest fans. There?s also the only song to be recorded thrice in her discography ?Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowerie? which closes ?Mender? and is reprised later on the ?Ys Street Band? EP. It arrives here the most fully formed of all her work thus far, which makes it ironic that she?s gone back and tried to perfect it, but perhaps suggests a certain attachment to the song, one of her finest. And it bears noting that while the vocal performances and arrangements were yet to come together, for the most part lyrically most of the songs are very similar to their re-recorded cousins. There are some differences, an odd and off putting inclusion of the word ?bitch? after each line of the chorus of ?En Gallop!? and an apologetic line in ?Clam, Crab?? that would go on to become far more romantic on ?Mender?

She followed that up in 2003 with ?Yarn and Glue? a similarly small project that none the less caught the eye of several, including Will Oldham (better known to some as Bonnie ?Prince? Billy or in several iterations of the non de plum Palace - Palace Music, Palace Brothers, among others) who asked her to open for him on one of his US tours. 

In my eyes it suffers from many of the same faults as her first EP. The rawness of her voice is there but the verve is missing. This disc debuts three songs later recorded for ?Mender?: ?Sprout and the Bean?, ?This Side of the Blue? and ?Bridges and Balloons?. The most expansively changed of them is probably ?Bridges and Balloons? which is a good deal different in both tone and lyrically to it?s later version. And with ?Walnut Whales? the unreleased songs lack the flair of those which were re-recorded later. And again the highlight in ballad - ?This Side of the Blue? comes closest to it?s later counter-part in terms of delivery and effectiveness.

It?s certainly not unclear, despite whatever reservations I may have about these early EPs., what was seen in them. They?re lyrically superb and while most of these songs were better done later they still exude some of the charm they?d later show.

After opening for Will Oldham, Joanna also opened for Cat Power and started playing shows by herself, slowly building a fan base, largely on the internet. Thus her first proper record ?Milk Eyed Mender? was released to some anticipation in 2004 on Drag City records. It was much lauded critically, for the most part, in part perhaps because most of those listening to it were the sort to be accepting of a record that is certainly not lacking in quirkiness.




The tracklist for ?Milk Eyed Mender? boasts several of the songs used earlier in her EPs but here, perhaps due to her time touring and performing them or perhaps because of the influence of producer Noah Georgeson (a former band mate in California band The Pleased, wherein Joanna played the keyboard) they burst with a certain immediacy that was lacked in the earlier versions. It appears she?s gotten more comfortable and confident in her voice and her arrangements are far classier and pretty than in the early EPs.

One of the best examples of this is the opening track ?Bridge and Balloons? which is slowed down from the original version and exudes a grace that it didn?t previously possess. Joanna seems to own these songs much more than before, she seems to believe her lyrics in a way missing previously and the effect is enchanting. 

The record, which also included newly written songs ?Sadie? ?Inflamatory Writ? (a highlight here, as nowhere else does she sound as confident or strident) and ?Swansea?, as well as the traditional ?Three Little Babes? (which has a certain song story element that most predicts her next record?s turn) was a giant critical success and continues to be lauded to this day as one of the finer records of the decade. Pitchfork, who initially gave it a 8.0 review, placed it #47 of the decade and called it the tenth best record of 2004. It was Tiny Mix Tapes #1 record of the year, #5 on the Onion?s A-V Club website and #20 in the Village Voice. It has placed well in several recent ?Best of the Decade? lists and appears to have become a bit of a touchstone record for the so-called ?Freak Folk? movement, of which Joanna is often associated along with artists such as Devendra Banhart, Animal Collective and Vetiver.




For her next record, two years later, Joanna would tell Pitchfork Media she was attempting to chronicle a year that was personal wrought for her. In writing songs about ?four major things? that had happened in that year, she said she came to the conclusion that while she generally agreed that song writing should be sparse, it felt vulgar to her to shorten her feelings into easily digestible lengths. And thus the world was given ?Ys?.

She decided that there was a need for an orchestral background to the record and recruited Van Dyke Parks to arrange much of the record with her, after hearing his 1973 record ?Song Cycle?. Parks, perhaps best known for his role in helping write and arrange the until recently unfinished Beach Boys record ?Smile? gives the songs a grand, epic feel certainly missing from the comparatively spare previous record. In only 5 songs, spanning 55 minutes, Newsom and Parks construct grand and complex stories which are, belying their length, captivating full through.

The name ?Ys? comes from a Breton folk tale of a sunken city not unlike the more familiar Atlantis. The record and the choice of the name of it came after both the tragedies in New Orleans with Hurricane Katrina and the Tsunami that crippled Indonesia. It was certainly a title which, when looked at closely, was quite audacious.

 
The longest and most ambitious song on the record is like ?Only Skin?, which clocks in at just under 17 minutes and includes vocal assists from Bill Callahan (her boyfriend at the time), and which she admits is her attempt to take all four of the events that inspired the record and address all of them. The resulting song flows along with some her most accomplished lyrical work and an arrangement that pushes her, as many of them do, to interesting places with her voice. There's a great flow to the song and when it climaxes around 6 minutes in it doesn't falter from there, as the duet portion keeps things interesting. It's perhaps the most arresting track she's ever recorded.

In many ways the evolution of Joanna?s voice on Ys is one of the most striking things about it. Put in a vastly different environment than her previous work, she stretches her voice to new and interesting places. It?s harder to justify comments, which were made by many about ?Mender? that her voice was child-like on this record. It?s clearly still not classically trained but it has a sense of pacing that is new to this record. On ?Mender? it seemed often, while assured, she was throwing out bits of quirk in her voice, to be digested as you would. On Ys, however, every note seems well planned and paced.

Ys, like it?s predecessor was very much critically acclaimed but was also under a larger microscope than it?s largely cult-adored predecessor. Some of the mainstream reviews, most notably Rolling Stone?s two star dissection, seemed to take aim at the cult following she?d grown to have and rebel against the audacious manner of the project. Many of the detractors noted a ?renn faire? feel to it, condescendingly. 

In spite of that, the reaction among the audience that she?d built from ?Mender? was largely positive, as Pitchfork Media gave her a 9.4 (still among their highest ratings in the past few years), The Guardian, as mentioned, gave it five stars and it got perfect reviews from ?Uncut? magazine, ?Slant? Magazine and the website ?Pop Matters? among others. In spite of the poor reviews from some it maintained a cumulative score among accredited reviewers according to Metacritic.com of 85 of 100, making it one of the most acclaimed records of 2006. In addition it was the #1 record of the year for Tiny Mix Tapes, #10 for Pitchfork, #7 for Time Magazine and even Rolling Stone?s German edition, disagreeing with their American counterparts placed it as #2 for the year.

Since it?s release ?Ys? has also gotten praise as the 18th best record of the decade from Tiny Mix Tapes and as #83 from Pitchfork. It?s been on many other lists as well but it?s mixed (if ultimately positive) reaction seems to have given the impression that it?s looked upon as the slightly lesser of her two records overall.




Following ?Ys?, the only other contribution to her discography, until the upcoming ?Have One on Me? has been the 3 song ?Ys Street Band? EP, with one new song ?Colleen? which manages to have much of the same charms as both records, an interesting synthesis. Along with it are new takes on Ys track ?Cosmia? and a lovely full band version of ?Mender?s ?Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowerie? which may be a slight improvement over the Mender version.

Coming soon is her triple record ?Have One on Me? which, from the three tracks that have made it onto the internet, appears to be a hybrid of the two earlier records, spread  across three records and a two hour run time. Doubtlessly it?ll be a much talked about record and it appears, from just it?s length to be perhaps even more audacious than ?Ys? which is no small task. Only time will tell, however, if it?ll reach the levels of praise of her first two records.

The tracks in question: ?81?, ?Good Intentions Paving Company? and ?Kingfisher? are all among her better work: ?81? is a gentle ballad, ?Good Intentions? is a rollicking, bouncy track of which we?ve heard little to nothing like in her discography to this point and ?Kingfisher? sounds like a continuation and expansion of the sound explored on ?Ys?.

?Good Intentions? especially shows a side that makes me excited (or more excited) to hear what we have in store on ?Have One on Me? - it has shades of Dusty Springfield and lyrically is a stunner. 

This Tuesday sees the release of ?Have One on Me? and we?ll have to see if she can pull off album number three. Considering her discography to this point and what we?ve heard, I?d put the chances as quite good.

 
   

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