Joanna Newsom

thumb|Joanna Newsom Joanna Newsom (born 1982) is an American singer-songwriter. She plays the harp, as well as the piano and the harpischord. Quotes I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming; not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences are, lining those up at strange moments in the line of the song. I’m not sure if that comes across or not. dustedmagazine.com, 19 April 2004 I'm not terribly interested in playing harp on other people's music right now. Partly because I feel like many people view the harp as this kind of gimmick. You know, like they have songs that are fully realized, complete songs, and then they think "How do we make this special? - Ooh, let's bring the harp in!" and they kind of want a harpist to play a glissando and play some heavenly noise in the background. I'm really interested in the harp as a fully actualized, self-contained way of presenting songs. That there is a bass in the harp - there is a way to create a rhythmic sense without drums - there's a way to have all sorts of textural variations and expressive variations.I also don't want to feel bound to the harp, I'd be interested in bringing other instruments in at some time. But I think the harp has been viewed in one particular way for so long, and has been limited for so long, that I feel like I am really interested in stretching the boundaries of what it's capable of doing and how it's perceived. Sunday Service, 13 December 2004 My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has … coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to. Sydney Morning Herald, 10 October 2005 Well, Nabokov is definitely my favorite author, though I feel strange calling him an "influence," since I can't trace the ways in which his writing may or may not have seeped into my own. But I also love William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, Kenneth Patchen, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Mark Helprin (who wrote a beautiful book called Winter's Tale), and Kurt Vonnegut. My favorite book of all time is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. chickfactor.com - Issue 16, 2005 Interview with Pitchfork (2006) A conversation between Brian Howe and Joanna Newsom, about her album Ys (2006) [The title] was the last thing that I chose, after all the songs and the cover art were finished. So none of the songs directly allude to that myth. But the main themes that emerge out of that myth are really close to the themes on the record -- mortality, decadence, an excess of water, isolation, rebirth. The myth is also significant to me because of the way that I encountered it, which relates to one of the huge events the record is about.I also liked the power of the word itself. I liked how violent and cryptic it felt; it's such a daunting word to encounter. I like how it contrasted this finely rendered, carefully composed front cover -- the painting is information-dense, formal, and stylized; it looks the way something looks when a painter spends a year on it, which is what Benjamin [Vierling] did. So it has all this detail and carefulness to it, which was really important to me and relates very closely to the record. But I also felt like it needed some sort of ballast, or balance, next to it, to reflect the other elements of the record; its innate violence. I wanted a word that was like throwing a brick at the visual on the front cover; I liked that whenever someone looked at that cover they also had to encounter this short, weird word. I don't necessarily see the elements that I invoke on the cover and in the songs as being in binary opposition. I know certain binary tensions emerge between these elements, but a lot of times they're more like archetypal elements; these free-standing, huge forces. Mortality, standing alone, as a thing; as opposed to, "Over here's life; over here's death. Here's bad luck, but here's blessing and redemption. Here's water; here's fire." Certainly those things come up again and again in the songs, but it's not intentional, and probably has more to do with the fact that those things emerge in real life, without any effort on our part whatsoever, than they are derived from any classical tradition. I think classicism in general might reflect more closely the natural order of human life, while postmodernism is somehow removed from the natural order, more cerebral and sterile, removed from real life on some level. So what seems like classicism in some of these songs might be just what I view as an accurate reflection of real life on this planet. I can't call them linear narratives, and I can't call them chronological in a traditional, classical sense; I'm sure there's plenty of stuff I borrow more from William Faulkner than William Shakespeare. I just find it funny that at this point, we see a collection of highly charged, highly potent symbols as referring back to a classical aesthetic, because to me they seem deeply connected to the pedestrian actuality of real life. The Milk-Eyed Mender (2004) We sailed away on a winter's dayWith fate as malleable as clayBut ships are fallible, I sayAnd the nautical, as all things, fades. Bridges & Balloons And a thimble's worth of milky moonCan touch hearts larger than a thimble. Bridges & Balloons I killed my dinnerwith karatekicked him in the face,taste the body, shallow work is the work that I do. The Book of Right-On And all that we built, and all that we breathedAnd all that we spilled or pulled up like weeds Is piled up in back and it burns irrevocablyAnd we spoke up in turns 'til the silence crept over me. And the love we hold, and the love we spurn, Will never grow cold, only taciturn Sadie Go to sleep, you stunning sky, gently creep, cunning byA quiet hum is amplified by your thumb that you suck dryA hundred raging waters snare the lonely sighHold your breath and clasp at Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia While yonder, wild and blue,the wild blue yonder looms.'Till we are wracked with rheum,by roads, by songs entombed. Swansea I do as I please.Now I'm on my knees.Your skin is something that I stir into my tea.And I am watching youand you are starry, starry, starry... Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie Ys (2006) Emily, I saw you last night by the riverI dreamed you were skipping little stones across the surface of the waterFrowning at the angle where they were lost, and slipped under foreverIn a mud cloud, mica-spangled, like the sky'd been breathing on a mirror. And everything with wings is restless,aimless, drunk and dour;butterflies and birds collide, at hot ungodly hours.And my clay-coloured motherlessness rangily reclines;come on home now!All my bones are dolorous with vines! We could stand for a centuryStaring, with our heads cockedIn the broad daylight at this thingJoyLandlockedIn bodies that don't keepDumbstruck with the sweetness of beingUntil we don't be Emily Now her coat drags through the water,Bagging, with a life's-worth of hunger, limitless minnowsIn the magnetic embrace,Balletic and glacial, of Bear's insatiable shadow. Monkey & Bear Then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precisionWhile, somewhere, with your pliers and glue, you make your first incisionAnd, in a moment of almost-unbearable vision, doubled over with the hunger of lions'Hold me close', cooed the dove, who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds. And though our bones, they may breakAnd our souls separate,why the long face?And though our bodies recoilFrom the grip of the soil,why the long face? Sawdust & Diamonds Picking through your pocket lining, well what is this?Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus? Well I'm starvin' and freezin'In this measly old bed(Then I'll crawl across the salt flatsTo stroke your sweet head)Come across the desert,with no shoes on?(I love you truly,or I love no-one) Only Skin Water were your limbsAnd the fire was your hairAnd then the moon caught your eye,and you rose through the air.Well if you've seen true light,then this is my prayer:Will you call meWhen you get there? Cosmia Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band (2007) "Have you come, then, to rescue me?"He laughed and said, "from what, 'Colleen'?" You dried and dressed most willingly.You corseted, and caught the dread diseaseby which one comes to know such peace." Colleen Have One On Me (2010) We are blessed and sustained by what is not said Easy By the time you read thisI will be so far awayDaddy longlegs, how in the worldAm I to be expected to stay? Have One On Me We broke our hearts,in the war betweenSt. George and the dragon,but both, in equal part,are welcome to come along.I'm inviting everyone. '81 But it can make you feel over, and old (Lord, you know it's a shame), when I only want for you to pull over, and hold me,till I can't remember my own name. Good Intentions Paving Company This is the song for Baby Birch. I will never know you. And at the back of what we've done, there is that knowledge of you. held her there, kicking and mewling, upended, unspooling, unsung and blue; told her "wherever you go, little runaway bunny, I will find you." And then she ran, as they're liable to do. Baby Birch And if you come and see me,you will upset the order.You cannot come and see me,for I set myself apart.But when you come and see me,in California,you cross the border of my heart. In California A feather of a hawk was boundBound around my neckA poultice made of figThe eager little vultures pecked Jackrabbits Wolf-spider, crouch in your funnel nest.If I knew you, once,now I know you less.In the sinking sand,where we've come to rest,have I had a hand in your loneliness? With the lonelinessof you mighty men,with your mighty kissthat might never, never end,while, so far away,in the seat of the West,burns the fountof the heatof that loneliness. Go Long And, when the bulbs do flash,as bright as morning,the crowd keeps on gatheringlike an electric storm. Esme Driven through by her own sword,summer died last night, alone. I may have changed, it's hard to gaugeTime won't account for how I've agedWould that I could tie your lying tongueWho says that leaving keeps you young. Autumn In this life, who did you love,beneath the drifting ashes,beneath the sheeting banks of airthat barrenly bore our rations? And, for the sake of that pit of snakes,for whom did you allay your shyness,and spend all your mercy, and madness, and grace,in a day, beneath the bending cypress? Hung from the underbelly of the EarthWhile the stars skid away belowGormless and brakeless; gravel-looseFalling silent as gavels in the snow. It is too short — the day we are born,we commence with our dying. Kingfisher Coats of bouclé, jacquard and cashmere;cartouche and tweed, all silver shot —and everything that could remind youof how easy I was not. It does not sufficefor you to say I am a sweet girl,or to say you hate to see me sadbecause of you.It does not suffice,to merely lie beside each other,as those who love each other do. The tap of hangers,swaying in the closet —unburdened hooksand empty drawers —and everywhere I tried to love youis yours again,and only yours. Does Not Suffice Divers (2015) But inasmuch as that light is loaned, insofar as we’ve borrowed bones, must every debt now be repaid in star-spotted, sickle-winged night raids In the folds and the branches,somewhere, out there,I was only just born into open air.Now hush, little babe.You don’t want to bedown in the trenches,remembering with me,where you will not mark my leaving,and you will not hear my parting song. Nor is there cause for grieving.Nor is there cause for carrying on. Anecdotes Above them,parades mark the passing of daysthrough parks where pale colonnades archin 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 birdcalls,and the records they left are cryptic at best,lost in obsolescence Sapokanikan In December of that year,the word came down that she was here.The days grew shorter.I was sure, if she came 'round,I’d hold my ground. I'd endure.But they'd alluded to a changethat came to pass,and Spring, deranged,weeping grass and sleepless,broke herself upon my windowglass.And I could barely breathe, for seeingall the splintered light that leaked her fissures,fleeing, launched in flight:unstaunched daylight, brightly bleeding,bleached the night with dawn, deleting,in that high sun,after our good run,when the spirit bendsbeneath knowing it must end. Leaving the City What’s redacted will repeat,and you cannot learn that you burn when you touch the heat,so we touch the heat,and we cut facsimiles of love and death(just separate holes in sheetswhere you cannot breathe, and you cannot see). Goose Eggs As the day is long,so the well runs dry,and we came to see Time is tallerthan Space is wide.And we bade goodbyeto the Great Divide:found unlimited simulacreage to colonize! All we saw was that Time is taller than Space is wide.That's why we got bound to a round desert island,'neath the sky where our sailors have gone.Have they drowned, in those windy highlands?Highlands away, my John. Waltz Of The 101st Lightborne lists of sins and solemn vowsdon't make you any friends. The Things I Say And in an infinite regress:Tell me, why is the pain of birthlighter borne than the pain of death? I know we must abideeach by the rules that bind us here:the divers, and the sailors, and the women on the pier. Recall the word you gave:to count your way across the depths of this arid world,where you would yoke the waves,and lay a bed of shining pearls! I dream it every night:the ringing of the pail,the motes of sand dislodged,the shucking, quick and bright;the twinned and cast-off shells reveal a single heart of white. And never will I wed.I'll hunt the pearl of death to the bottom of my life,and ever hold my breath,till I may be the diver's wife. Divers Hey little leaf, lying on the ground—now you're turning slightly brown!Why don't you come back on the tree,turn the color green the way you ought to be? Same Old Man In martial wind, and in clarion rain, we minced into battle, wincing in pain; not meant for walking, backs bound in twine:not angel or devil,but level, in time. Now the towns and forests, highways and plains,fall back in circles like an emptying drain.And I won't come round this way again,where the lonely wind abides,and you will not take my heart, alive. You Will Not Take My Heart Alive So it would seem to be true: when cruel birth debases, we forget.When cruel death debases,we believe it erases all the restthat precedes.But stand brave, life-liver,bleeding out your daysin the river of time.Stand brave:time moves both ways Love is not a symptom of time.Time is just a symptom of love Joy! Again, around—a pause, a sound—a song:a way a lone a last a loved a long.A cave, a grave, a day: arise, ascend.(Areion, Rharian; go free and graze. Amen.)A shore, a tide, unmoored—a sight, abroad:A dawn, unmarked, undone, undarked (a god).No time. No flock. No chime, no clock. No end.White star, white ship—Nightjar, transmit: transcend! Time, As A Symptom External links Milky Moon fansite Pitchfork Media record review of "Ys" Pitchfork Media interview Category:Singer-songwriters from the United States Category:Folk singers Category:Living people Category:Women singers from the United States Category:1982 births Category:Women born in the 1980s