I pretty much knew this album sucked before I ever heard it. I had no idea who Joanna Newsom was and hadn’t heard a note of Ys (more like Ns) when it got rave reviews and made every music critic’s top 10 list of 2006, but I still figured it was bullshit. I mean, yeah, they keep saying it’s good, but there’s no way it actually is good. Then I heard the album. Turns out I was right.
Normally a ton of critical hype amounting to an awful album wouldn’t faze me in the least, but this album was so hyped and so awful that I couldn’t help ask myself a few questions: Is the indie community so creatively stagnant and aimless that they’ll tout whatever sounds different enough from what mom and dad listened to as “the next big thing?” Is the world of rock journalism so cynical that they think we’ll lap up just anything they make sound important? Is this chick deaf? I mean, I still wouldn’t be impressed, but it would explain why we’re all being nice to her, not to mention her voice.
Now I like 15 minute folk songs about faerie goblins and icicles as much as the next guy, but when it comes in the form of tuneless harp-prog I just can’t accept it as good. Newsom’s sound (I won’t call it music) is dreary, pedantic, aesthetically repulsive and horrifically pretentious, but all too misguided and dead-fucking-serious to be acceptably laughable (though I would love to laugh in Joanna’s face, it would probably melt her like water on the Wicked Witch). Newsom’s voice sounds like a buzzsaw to the ear’s genitals. If the lovechild of Billy Corgan and Fran Drescher chain-smoked through Roseanne’s vocal chords and then voiced a talking chicken in a Japanese cartoon on Nickelodeon, that chicken’s Bobcat Goldthwait impression would sound like Newsom’s singing voice. (Speaking of Japanimation, I bet it’s popular among Joanna’s fanbase, her lyrics have as much depth as a 14-year-old anime ninja philosophizing on “Do robots have feelings?” following a scene of a horny grandpa trying to look at a schoolgirl’s panties.) You might say Ys (more like Whys) is an acquired taste, to which I’d reply: only if I acquire it. Otherwise it’s just bad.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m sure she’s technically proficient as sweet get out on the harp, and has likely had more years of classical training than I’ve had days of not living in my parents’ house. She may even have a degree in harp from a place worth a damn and a half if I’d bother to wikipedia her. And hey, I’d like to see me play the harp better! I also wouldn’t doubt for a second that her live shows are simply the bee’s knees. I can just picture it: Joanna dressed up like Juliet playing the harp with all the grace of someone fake from a black-and-white movie, while maybe some other guy stands to the side and plays an instrument from
I get raving about this album on your blogs/zines/blogzines, believe me I really do. Because if I thought I “discovered” this shit, oh Christ, I would not shut the fuck up about it ever. I would hoist it upon my shoulders and parade it through town like the cure for cancer, taking it upon myself to make sure I get everyone into it, or at least let them all know I liked it first. I’d probably even convince myself that Joanna is hot. But I didn’t discover it, so I have no reason to pretend it’s anything but unlistenable garbage. If you really want to hear something arty and intelligent-seeming, go listen to Bach or Mozart or one of those guys who had the decency to die like 200 years before we decided to give a shit… hell even jazz would be a step up. If you want to listen to something quirky and obscure, go to the dollar bin of the used CD store, pick whatever has the funniest cover or band name, and hype that to the high heavens, it can only be more worthwhile than Joanna’s record and it’ll save the rest of us 9 bucks. And if you, like so many Newsom fans claim, just want to hear something that doesn’t sound like Britney Spears or Ashlee Simpson or the typical top 40 pap, well neither do car horns and screeching tires, so go play in traffic, motherfucker. Ys (more like Zzzzzs) is, without hyperbole, the worst audio I have ever heard.
