If I had been in a postin' mood yesterday I would have written about Joanna Newsom's new album, Ys, which I listened to twice Monday and twice today.  It has got to be one of the five or six best, most beautiful, intricate pop albums ever produced, and I feel that it is my solemn duty to say as many nice things about it as possible, so that you will run out and buy it as quickly as possible.

First things first: Newsom's voice draws a lot of comparisons to Bjork's, and while I'm a big Bjork fan, whenever someone makes this comparison there's always an implicit "if you're into that sort of thing."  Let me assure you, however unconventional Newsom's voice may sound at first, you are into this sort of thing.  Ys is the sort of music you have been waiting for someone to make. 

Now, there's an orchestra backing Newsom's harp-work (conducted by Van Dyke Parks), and some of the songs exceed nine minutes (most of them, in fact), but don't let any of this throw you.  The orchestra only serves to highlight the swooping, protean character of Newsom's voice, which is at one moment childlike and delicate, at the next, wizened and raw.  The songs themselves are so variable and engrossing that even "Only Skin," weighing in at sixteen minutes, seems to pass before you've even begun to grasp it.

If all of this sounds a little too, well, classical, your on the right track. There is a kind of archaic quality to the composition, but not in a cheap, Enya kind of a way (yeah, you heard me).  The music may recall centuries past, but Ys remains a distinctly 21st century pop album.  The emphasis is still on things like melody and harmony, and the interaction of words and chord changes.

How 'bout some lyrics:

Last week our picture window produced a half-word 
Heavy and hollow, hit by a brown bird 
We stood and watched her gape like a rattlesnake 
And pant and labour over every intake 

I said a sort of prayer for some sort of rare grace 
Then thought I ought to take her to a higher place 
Said: "dog nor vulture nor cat shall toy with you 
And though you die, bird, you will have a fine view" 

Then in my hot hand 
She slumped her sick weight 
We tramped through the poison oak 
Heartbroke and inchoate

A little maudlin around the edges perhaps, taken out of context, but the overall quality of the language and vividness of the imagery ("gape like a rattlesnake") seems fairly well-done for a pop song.  The lack of the words "baby" or "sexyback" will probably turn some people off, though. 

Whenever someone tries to do something interesting with language, there is a certain portion of the population which immediately loses interest, crying "artsy" or "nonsense" or both.  In these moments I like to make a distinction between James Joyce (who I like) and Thomas Pynchon (who I don't).  Now you may prefer to reverse these examples (if you're a philistine) but what I'm getting at is there's good difficult and bad difficult, and Joanna Newsom's lyrics falls somewhere well into the good side of the spectrum.  She is evocative, moving, complicated, and enthralling, and I don't have any idea what she's talking about most of the time. 

Like Finnegans Wake, if you're into that sort of thing.

P.S. Pitchfork's got a pretty good interview with Ms. Newsom.