Newsom’s 2004 debut ‘The Milk Eyed Mender’ heralded an extraordinary talent – a classically trained harpist whose woozy nursery rhymes and babyish voice delved deep into traditional American music while retaining a thrillingly contemporary ‘freak-folk’ edge.
This hugely ambitious follow-up shifts her from a backroom Appalachian shack to the Carnegie Hall. ‘Ys’ is immense in scope, recalling the Beach Boys’ ‘Smile’ or Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’, an epic sonic voyage across five lengthy orchestral tracks. It was recorded by lo-fi producer Steve Albini, orchestrated by Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks and mixed by Jim O’Rourke – the holy trinity of left-field rock, if you will – but has little in common with rock music as we know it. Newsom’s impish, squeaky, yodelling voice is brilliantly mimicked by Van Dyke Parks’ arrangements – all slurring strings and hiccupping woodwind – while her harp playing invokes everything from Celtic folk to African kora patterns to Steve Reich-style minimalism. The music lends a curious logic to her mystical pagan poetry; Newsom’s dippy lyrics about monkeys, bears, Breton princesses and meteorites make perfect sense because they seem to spring quite naturally from her own enchanting little world.
