¤ milky moon ¤

source of the light wrote:New to this forum, but I've been a Joanna fan for about 4 - 5 years now. I'm glad that it's finally here, although it feels a bit weird like it does when you've anticipated something so long.

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I'd agree with a lot of that. Anecdotes is among the best tracks on the album, but my favorite right now is Goose Eggs.

Personally I love the arrangements very much, and even better than the live versions. But I think Joanna is aware they might not be to everyone's liking. In the Libération interview she says the effect she was after was inspired by albums like Joni Mitchell's Blue, Randy Newman's Nilsson sings Newman and Roy Harper's Stormcock, where she loved the sense of ever expanding space, that all the different instrument or vocal layers brought. She likened them to "angels rolling down from heaven" or: "a bucket of water in your face".

I was expecting this album to be incredible but, not sure how, it exceeded my expectations. Joanna is incapable of putting out something bad, though I am completely amazed by this record!

Anecdotes (especially the second half); Leaving the City; Goose Eggs; Divers; A Pin-Light Bent and Time, as a Symptom are among my favorite tracks, even though I love them all!
I adore the structural complexity of some of the songs, all the instrumentation is absolutely on point, I love how innovative the usage of keyboards and synths sound for her music, it isn't something we are used to, I guess. But I'm getting used to it, and I'm loving it! Her songwriting, once again, never fails to impress me.
Couldn't have wished for something better!

P.S.: Super curious about the tour too! Considering some of the songs have both piano and harp playing at the same time, I wonder which instrument she's going to opt for in live performances. Exciting!

source of the light wrote:New to this forum, but I've been a Joanna fan for about 4 - 5 years now. I'm glad that it's finally here, although it feels a bit weird like it does when you've anticipated something so long.

I have only listened to it twice so far, so these are my initial reactions which are subject to change. On first listen, it was just so... overwhelming. There's just so much going on, I felt dizzy listening to it. Too much to take in. On the second listen, it was more familiar so it wasn't as overwhelming, but there's still so much left to process. It's so dense, like always with Joanna, but I kind of feel like this is even more dense than usual. Maybe because it's so short by Joanna's standards.

Anecdotes is such a killer opener! Almost makes the rest of the album seem disappointing in comparison when you're starting on such a high note. Probably the best song I've heard this year. A Pin Light Bent and You Will Not Take My Heart Alive also impressed me. And of course Divers is a marvellous song, but I prefer the live version. I guess that's the downside of listening to bootlegs before the studio versions are out. Speaking of which, it's time to get negative! While the songwriting is stellar as usual, I don't like the arrangements that much. Not on Anecdotes, of course, that song is perfect, but on some songs I feel like the arrangements are dragging it down. It's especially bothering on Leaving the City and Time as a Symptom. The live version of LtC was so beautiful and effective with just the harp. I don't understand why she felt the need to throw so much crap on it. Ironically, that "fast" part felt much more lively when it was just harp and the studio version takes that liveliness away from it. With Time, I've only heard the studio version so I don't know what it could have sounded like if it was different, but the orchestral parts are just so overblown and a little bit cheesy (kind of like Monkey and Bear was cheesy - don't get me wrong, it's a great song, but there's a reason why it's my least favourite on Ys). It sounds like she really wanted it to be epic, but it's just so mismatched and uninspired. And I get that feeling sometimes on the record, that she threw in some extra instrumentation to make it sound "bigger" but it ended up not fitting. On Ys, the instrumentation was very lush and epic, but the songs were long epics so it fit. Here, it would have benefited if she toned it down a bit. The songs are relatively short, so it doesn't have as much room to build on as, say, Only Skin did. Even on HOOM the shorter songs were pretty sparse, and I like that because it gave the songs room to breathe. I also would have preferred more harp and less piano. Not that I have anything against the piano, I just like her harp playing more.

This album is probably not a masterpiece like Ys and HOOM, I think it's more on par with MEM which is still very good. But like I said, I haven't listened to this album nearly enough yet, so I know there's a lot left to discover and it will probably grow on me more.

Hi source of the light! You described my first listening experience pretty well. I felt overwhelmed by how dense everything was. I agree with some of what you wrote but not all.

First of all, I totally agree about Anecdotes! I loved it from the first listen and it is still my favourite. I think the orchestration makes its sound the most Ys-like of the songs, but at the same time it has its own fresh sound. I love the “minimalist” sounding orchestration around the “sickly-winged night raids” part and the when the synths come in. I tend to gravitate towards her more narratively-complex songs and I really look forward to unpacking this one over time.

I disagree about the arrangements. I’ve never been one to prefer live versions and although it was overwhelming on first listen with so much going on in the songs, as I’ve become more familiar with the album I’m really enjoying all of the layered sounds. I find myself listening over headphones, which I normally never do, because I can really appreciate the beautiful instrumentation and production this way.

However, I do agree with you about the orchestration on “Time, as a Symptom.” It is the only song on the album that I don’t particularly like, which makes me feel like a lone dissenter given how much others seem to appreciate it. Perhaps, those who enjoy it should read no further because I wouldn’t want my comments to impinge on that enjoyment. I find the orchestration, piano, and emotional tone of the song cheesy and overwrought. I think you are right that the short length of the song contributes to this because it doesn’t allow for a more stretched out emotional build and crescendo. While I love the “rag-timey” piano Newsom employs on Sapokanikan and a number of tracks on HOOM, generally I tend to be turned off by singer-songwriters who use piano as their main instrument, mostly because they seem to tend towards this kind of melodramatic, exaggerated, blunt emotionalism. On “Time” I feel like she is verging on this musical/emotional territory that I already have a strong dislike towards. The first time I heard it I was pretty horrified and unsettled by it all.

One of the aspects of Newsom’s songwriting that I appreciate the most is the subtlety and ambiguity with which she expresses the emotional content of the human relationships in her narratives. In contrast, at least on first listen, the emotional content of Time comes across as direct to the point of being simplistic.

However, all that being said, after more listens, although I still dislike the above aspects of the song, I’ve come to appreciate some of its narrative elements that tie it into the album as a whole. I think appreciating the epic “big” emotions of this song requires a better understanding of the overall narrative that it is a part of, and as that narrative becomes clearer, the ambitious scope of the orchestration and emotional content of the final song may make more sense. At least I hope it does.

Even if I never am able to appreciate "Time," I love every other song on the album and I can’t agree that it’s uninspired. I hope you are able to get into the songs over time, but if not, their will most likely be some amazing live versions soon that you may like better. Since there is no way that "Time" could be performed live with its orchestra and layered vocals, I'm really interested to see if a parred down live version could make me love it.

I didn't get my preorder of the album until yesterday and I was dead set on listening to it for the first time on vinyl, so I am really late to this party! I have only listened to it once and I can already tell a lot of the songs are going to be growers.

The songs that made me cry the first time I heard them were Anecdotes, Sapokanikan, Divers, You Will Not Take My Heart Alive, A Pin-Light Bent and Time, As a Symptom. I need more time with The Waltz of the 101st Lightborne and The Things I Say but I can tell they're going to grow on me a lot (TTIS is more getting used to a version other than the Pitchfork performance). The only one I am not really sure about it Goose Eggs. I like the lyrics but the musical style is just not my jam. I'm sure I'll probably come to appreciate it in time though. I expected to feel kind of "meh" about Same Old Man since it's not an original but I really love what she did with it. And I appreciate it even more because it's one of the very few songs on this album I will be able to sing along to! She hit so many gd high notes and it sounds beautiful but never in a million years will I be able to hit them.

How would you describe the overall emotional tone of Divers? I've noticed some people have described it as her most lighthearted and playful album, and some have even described it as joyful and life-affirming (I supposed based on Time, as a symptom?). Others have heard it as a more serious or melancholic tone. I find this dissonance interesting, that different people could have polar opposite interpretations of the feeling of the album.

For my part, while I find the instrumentation very playful, I tend to hear the emotional tone overall as quite melancholy. I think I hear it this way because of the twofold focus on memory and death. Memories, even when they are good immediately evoke an awareness of the ephemerality of life. The theme of death of course triggers existential questions that are unsettling to say the least. I often feel the perspectives through which the songs unfold are very internal, inward looking and solitary. Kind of like how "The Things I Say" creates the impression of someone sitting alone in the evening and reminiscing. Its more of an album that represents one's relation to oneself and one's history more than one's relations to other living people. Even in cases when romantic love is evoked it tends to feel like there is a great distance between the characters, as in the song Divers, or else it only appears in a dream (as in Lightborne) which again refers to an internal space of the narrator rather than the living present.

I think its this sense of inwardness and solitariness that define the emotional tone of the album for me. Part of what makes Goose Eggs so likeable and affecting is that it stands out as a bit of an exception where the narrator is relating both to a friend and a "honey" who she knows.

I find it more intellectual than her other albums. More than the others, I think, which still appeal a great deal to the intellect lyrically, but concentrate, musically, on the emotions. This is the most conceptual: time is a clear theme, it's clearly indicated in the structure, the titles of the songs, its recurrence in the lyrics, and it's explored in astonishing depth. Other albums seem to me to explore moods more than ideas.

I totally agree that his is her most conceptual album. In which case the emotional tone may not be the best way to approach the album.

However, for me as a listener it's fundamental to how I relate to the conceptual material. I'm an intellectually curious listener, and I like to go down some of the rabbit holes present in the many references in a song like Sapiokanikan. But ultimately it is how she sings the words "look and despair" that really gets me. If I can place myself in the shoes of a concrete narrator and imagine walking through the parks, encountering rusting monuments, and ruminating on the kinds of thoughts present in the song, that is when it has the greatest impact. Sapokanikan is incredibly successful at presenting so many layered and obscure references while still being easily relatable.

There was a really great article about Divers posted recently and a paragraph summed up the emotional perspective of the album very well in my opinion. I will post it here when I find it.

Found it! the article is from Slate: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/musi ... shing.html

"In these moments the preoccupation with time also seems to be about coming into fully fledged adulthood, all too aware of youth passing into retrospect, of the ultimate threat of mortality, and of the complicated choices to be made in-between—including where to settle (“Leaving the City”) and (most conspicuously in “Time, as a Symptom”) what it might mean to bring a child into the flux of time with you."

This is the emotional territory I hear represented across the album.

Headless_Caboose wrote:I totally agree that his is her most conceptual album. In which case the emotional tone may not be the best way to approach the album.

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There was a really great article about Divers posted recently and a paragraph summed up the emotional perspective of the album very well in my opinion. I will post it here when I find it.

Oh yeah, I totally agree. One of the great strengths of her music is how everything comes together to form a whole greater than the sum of its parts: the imagery, the concepts, the instrumentals, the voice. When I say it's the most intellectual, I also mean in terms of emotional tone: a lot of the songs have a kind of contemplative sound to them.

If you take A Pin-Light Bent, for instance, it sounds sort of sad, which is appropriate since it's about the moments before someone's death, but there's also a strong sense of wonder in there, as the narrator is, in the last moments of their life, detached from their fate, and able to ponder it philosophically.

Or in Waltz of the 101st Lightborne, there's a sort of incongruity between the tone and the subject matter. She's singing about events that have fundamentally changed the human condition in apparently undesirable ways, but again, the emotional tone of the music communicates a kind of philosophical attitude to it: it sounds more nostalgic than baneful. I should maybe say 'philosophical' rather than 'intellectual'.

I think I get your point better now. I think that both contemplative and nostalgic are really good words to capture the feeling of the album. I think I was using words like inward-looking and solitary to capture a similar idea, but they don't quite work. Contemplative or reflective are better because they aren't limited to a train of thought that is directed solely "inwardly," whatever that even means!

I do get a sense of a kind of distance in relation to the subject matter that could be called philosophical. The themes are "big" and in trying to grapple with them the album steps outside of any one particular perspective in order to gain an overview of the big picture, which could be applied to the time/death in the abstract but also a taking stock of ones particular life trajectory, past and future. (I recall one interview where Joanna describes this with reference to looking down at a landscape from a great distance.) However, as you note, this distant, reflective perspective doesn't lead to the implications of the themes being any less keenly felt. Pin Light is particularly intense in this regard. I agree that the melancholic tone is not necessarily despairing, but closer to an ambiguous sadness/wondering/questioning.

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source of the light wrote:This album is probably not a masterpiece like Ys and HOOM, I think it's more on par with MEM which is still very good. But like I said, I haven't listened to this album nearly enough yet, so I know there's a lot left to discover and it will probably grow on me more.

I sort of felt that way at first - I could recognise that it was a work of genius, but I didn't connect with it in the same way as Ys or (certain songs on) HOOM. However, the more I've listened to it, the more acquainted I've got with the complex melodies, the more they've started to stick in my head. I think this is my favourite album now. There's so much in it to appreciate that it takes some time, but it's sooooooo good once you get it.