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Sapokanikan ['Look and Despair']

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 06:57
by ichiboy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRuPSf2Zh34

I was so fortunate to catch this live. Enjoy, everyone!

Unofficial name: Look and Despair.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (link)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 07:20
by Wanbli

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (link)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 07:25
by ichiboy
Thoughts:

3:57- Did you all hear what I heard? That definitely caught me off guard, considering Newsom's lack of the seven words you can't say (brilliantly done by George Carlin, here- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgZZ82tp5es. I like it in this song though, she works it in with her wordsmith magic.

Also, just uggg, the vocal part 3:30 onward is stunning. She seems to just continually add new vocal capacity and techniques to her repertoire. I love the shift & play between the two parts of the song, reminiscent of the progression from the first to second half of Have One On Me (the song).

I'm liking the ideas developing in the two songs we've heard. She recurrently mentions long periods of time , seen in the repetition of "infinite" or "why are the pains of birth lighter born than the pain of death" from Diver's Wife. In Look and Despair, the first half is full references to the ancient, then moves to an imagined future, "a hunter from 100 years from now may look and despair". These contrast the historicized past with the future and death. I find this and Diver's Wife to be some of Joanna's most philosophical and perhaps, darkest music to date. Though, 'dark' with Joanna means a completely different thing than it does with most artists; she creates beauty and a love, in many senses of the word, out of our mortality better than any artist I can think of.

One of those moments where I'm so grateful to have artist like this in my life.

:notworthy:

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 13:08
by Andrew
I have this so far:

The cause is ours in (?)
The map or sap or content
Is sanded and bevelled,
The land lorn and levelled
By some unrecorded and powerful hand.

Which plays along the monument
And drums upon a plastic path.
The brave men and women (?) to God
And famous to all of the ages wrath.

Sang:
"Do you love me?
Will you remember?"
The snow falls above me.
Around the hand, the rerounders.
The event is in the hand.

Oh God.

Beneath a patch of grass
Her bones the old Dutch master hid
Will (?) to bias
And the ancient disguise,
Would the scholars surmise,
Was a mother and kid.

In turn with other daughters,
In dirt in other potter's fields,
Above them parades mark the passing of days
To parks where pale colonades arch in marble and steel.

Where all of the twenty-thousand attending your foot fall,
And the cost of (?) died for her lost in the idling bird calls,
And the records they left are cryptic at best
Lost in obsolescence.
The text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal
With any fluorescence.
Where the hand of the master begins and ends

I fell, I tried to do well but I won't be
Go tell the one that I love to remember and hold me
I call, I call for the doctor
But the snow swallows me whole with all flowy water
And the event lives only in print.

He said:
"It's alright,
And it's all over now,
And (?)
Is built unfastened
The boy was known to show unusual (?)"
And called a boy
"This older man confounding (?)
In whose employ contaminant (?)

Always a standard
To which the wise and honest so may repair,
To which a hunter,
A hundred years from now, may look and despair
And see with wonder
The tributes we have left to rust in the parks
Wearing red her hair
Stood up and to siege on purring mitchell depart ( :lol: )

For the Western front where I walk.
My God.
(?)
God.
I will the hunter to decipher the start,
And what lies, I know, the city is dark

So look and despair.
Look and despair.


Yeah no this song is fucking incredible. Soft as Chalk might be the closest analogue but her singing has reached a whole new level.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 13:41
by Jordan~
Exciting! :D

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 13:52
by Andrew
ichiboy, pitchfork just copied out the contents of your post, then linked to it in some kind of sloppy citational footnote :lol: what an awful website.

I want to try and get the lyrics down properly before I start to talk about it, but from the lyrics discussing records, scholars, masters, biases, marble colonades etc. and the dialogue between men towards the end it really conjures an atmosphere of dusty researchers in academic study

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 13:57
by polliwog
I just watched the video for the first time. I didn't clearly pick out a single word, nor was I able to identify a recognizable melody. Yet, I am practically dumbstruck! Her performance was mesmerizing! I feel enchanted, very much like I did the first time I heard her sing, when I saw the last half of her Sprout and the Bean video back in April of 2005. Does this mean that I'm about to become a "real" fan again? Oh God! I hope not!

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:01
by Andrew
You mean "fanboy". I mean, it's gorgeous and affecting, but it's not magic.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:08
by Jordan~
Guh she's so amazing. And if it's not magic, the word has no meaning.

The cause is Ozymandian.
The map (something that sounds like "o sacre") continent
is sanded and bevelled,
the land lorn and levelled
by some unrecorded and powerful hand

which plays along the monument
and drums upon a plastic pan,
The brave men and women so dear to God
and famous to all of the ages ran.

Sang:
"Do you love me?
Will you remember?"
The snow falls above me.
Around the hand, the rerounders(?).
The event is in the hand.

Oh God.

Beneath a patch of grass
her bones the old Dutch master hid
Well, I swear Tobias(?)
and the angel disguise
what the scholars surmise
was a mother and kid.

In turn with other daughters,
in dirt in other potters' fields,
above them parades mark the passing of days
to parks where pale colonnades arch in marble and steel

where all of the twenty-thousand attending your foot fall
and the cause that they died for are lost in the idling bird calls,
and the records they left are cryptic at best
lost in obsolescence.
The text will not yield, nor x-ray reveal
with any fluorescence.
where the hand of the master begins and ends.

I fell, I tried to do well but I won't be.
Go tell the one that I love to remember and hold me.
I call, I call for the doctor
but the snow swallows me whole with (something that sounds like "Ol' Flory Walker")
and the event lives only in print.

He said:
"It's alright,
and it's all over now,"
and boarded the plane,
his belt unfastened
the boy was known to show unusual daring.
And called a boy,
this older man, confounding Tammany Hall,
In whose employ contaminant proceeded (something that sounds like "John's force")

So we,
always a standard
to which the wise and honest so may repair,
to which a hunter,
a hundred years from now, may look and despair,
and see with wonder
The tributes we have left to rust in the parks
worrying that our hair stood up
and to (something that sounds like "John Powrie Mitchell") depart

for the Western front where I walk.
My God!
O mercy, O God!
God!
I will the hunter to decipher the start,
and what lies, I know, the city is dark.

So look and despair.
Look and despair.


Weird coincidence - I wikied "John Powrie Mitchell" in case that's actually what she was singing, and the second match was List of Lord Provosts of Dundee, where I live, and none of them have been called John Powrie Mitchell. I mishear three words in a Joanna Newsom song that, when searched for on Wikipedia, turn up a list of the Lord Provosts of my home town.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:16
by Andrew
"The cause is Ozymandian"

fuck!

thanks Jordan! I was working on the bridge again and your choices match my own edits.

haha, I was searching those names too! "and to see John Powrie Mitchell depart" does sound like the line... I can't think what it could be other than Mitchell.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:18
by Jordan~
With Ozymandian and phosphoresce, I think we're seeing a return to her not being embarrassed to use her vocabulary. She toned it down a little after hydrocephalitic, spelunking, etc. on Ys, the words critics always quoted as exemplary of her style.

That "John's force" is confusing, too. I think "contaminant" could be being used adjectivally, to mean "contaminating", but I'm not sure. I seem to recall her using a similar word similarly in another song. So it'd be, "in whose employ, contaminant, [this older man] proceeded ______".

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:22
by Andrew
No yeah, she really savours every syllable and there's so much delectable consonance and assonance going on. The "Do you love me?" part is very Have One on Me, however, all simplicity and sincerity and melisma. The work feels like a culmination.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:24
by Jordan~
Lots of wonderfully long sentences, too, which is quite Ysian. This and The Diver's Wife do seem kinda like Ys meets HOOM. And it's such a pleasure to hear her voice soaring about those higher registers again, like it used to. I guess her vocal chords recovered?

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:25
by Andrew
yep!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Purroy_Mitchel

I think we all have some reading to do!

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:27
by Jordan~
Mayor of New York? Well, that fits in with Tammany Hall.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:29
by Andrew
yep! also, the "boy mayor"

let's see what this Dutch master thing is referring to...

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:30
by Jordan~
Presumably one of the Renaissance painters from the Netherlands. Did any of them hide any bones? Is there a Biblical story of Tobias and an angel, and if so, did any of the Dutch masters paint it?

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:40
by Andrew
those researching skills :notworthy:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hercules_Seghers

in the Bible the angel appears to Tobias in disguise.

It is known that Rembrandt appreciated his work. He owned some of Seghers’s prints and even reworked one of his plates, Tobias and the Angel (c. 1633); keeping the landscape, he changed the figures, making it The Flight into Egypt (1653).


If Rembrandt reworked this print, perhaps the hidden bones are the hidden bones of the changed figures?

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:46
by Ann
A few little corrections that I think work:

So we all raise a standard
to which the wise and honest so may repair,

I will the hunter to decipher the start,
and what lies under the city is dark.

Fantastic job on the rest, you two, especially the specific names that I would've never gotten.

Re: New Song at Treasure Island (Look and Despair)

PostPosted: 15 Oct 2012, 14:47
by Jordan~
So John Purroy Mitchell confounded Tammany Hall by running against their candidate, though he lost; the Dutch master painted Tobias and the angel, which scholars surmise is a painting of a mother and child? It'd be good to see Rembrandt's reworking; I'll have a look for that now.