It’s an article of faith with me that music keeps on renewing itself, somehow coming up with previously familiar forms somehow made strange but in very special cases, containing something I’ve never heard before in my life. Here, we’ve got the baroque filligree of Van Dyke Parks, classical harp and an unprecedented voice. The nearest thing I’ve heard to it is that of Mary Margaret O’Hara whose voice twisted and writhed around her songs like baskets of eels or those troupes of Chinese acrobats who perform with long, colourful ribbons. Joanna Newsom was initially associated with the “weird folk” strand of recent U.S. underground music (not, that it’s particularly underground anymore), and played on records by Devandra Banhart before putting out “The Milk-Eyed Mender” in 2004. That record passed me by to some extent. I listened to it a few times, enjoyed it (mostly the unique voice) but it still seemed a little self-consciously precious: a diadem of short pieces set like gems, too many of them unmemorable except for that voice.
“Ys” (named for the mythical Breton city that sank beneath the waves) is something else altogether – five long, densely composed and structured tracks, everything about them extraordinary. Opener ‘Emily’ is makes this clear in the first few seconds – it’s a grounded, earthy sound – otherworldly only in the sense that there’s so much of the world packed into it. ‘Only Skin’ is the longest at seventeen minutes (this is not a record that makes any compromises for the listener) and the groundedness turns sensual. Her voice is high-pitched as it sounds but some of the squeals (not squeaks – these are squeals) and noises here are enough to make me blush. There’s nothing pixie-like going on. There’s an enchantment but it’s that of a Circe, not a Titania.
‘Monkey and Bear’ is a story of a circus escape that trips off into the surreal as the bear sheds his skin in the ocean and somehow is transposed into the heavens. The monkey stays behind, aging, wiser.
This is a unique record. I can’t imagine what she’ll do next but then, after ‘The Milk-Eyed Mender’ (which in retrospect has plenty of clues but still…) no-one could have imagined this. As ever, music continues to surprise and ambush me.
