Ys

It’s a vivid and beautiful painting that you can walk into; a magic window into another world that I'd be happy to get lost in, and never come back.

Ys is one of those rare sophomore albums that shatters exceedingly high expectations.

Ys is an exceptional piece of art in the broadest sense - give it the chance to grow on you.

For the 56 minutes that "Ys" lasts, all the doubts evaporate. Every elaboration has a purpose, every labyrinthine melodic detour feels necessary rather than contrived. Tempting as it is to fixate on the gilded reputations of her associates, this is unequivocally Newsom’s album.

For my money, Newsom has demonstrated more nuance, depth of feeling, and originality than a hundred bedazzling pop divas.

The album is a precious--in every sense of the word--masterpiece.

The people who hear this record will split into two crowds: The ones who think it's silly and precious, and the ones who, once they hear it, won't be able to live without it.

While Ys is ridiculously overwritten, over-performed and self-contained, her fables always sublimate into the hot fog of real emotions just before they calcify.

For those willing to let go a little and drift, Ys can be an amazing journey, especially when Parks' strings and Newsom's harp lock into a seductive dance, or when her voice catches one of the fleeting snatches of melody and rides it until it escapes.

The full orchestra doesn’t smack of overproduced grandiosity, which is a nice surprise. Less surprising, of course, is the album's incredible lyrical density. [#15]

Yes, Ys is a demanding listen, but it's also a rewarding and inspiring one.

From the lavish orchestration courtesy of Van Dyke Parks to the richness and sheer abundance of language at Newsom's disposal, Ys is a supreme achievement.

A knockout of an album.

She surpasses the level of comparatively hook-heavy songwriting set with The Milk-Eyed Mender by evoking a dramatic weight people will still be talking about years down the line. [Nov 2006, p.137]

Throughout the album, Newsom's language is more colorful than on Mender; at its best, it works as music even on the page. [Dec 2006, p.95]

Listening to Ys is like dreaming with eyes open, a detached lucidity in which clarity inevitably follows.

It is Newsom's voice that provides the stunning balm to bind this strange beauty together. [Dec 2006, p.118]

The narrative plot of each song retains the best features of Newsom's previous work, and is gloriously wordy. Here might be the album's one weakness, since it's simply hard to understand a line like "Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?" when it's set to rhythm, to say nothing of back-and-forth dialogue.

If you give it a chance (or maybe even a dozen chances, if you can stand it), and don't immediately dismiss it because it's by Joanna, I’m sure you’ll find something to love.

There is still something unsettlingly Renaissance fair-meets-Wind in the Willows about her music, yet something lovely lives there as well. [24 Nov 2006, p.109]

It’s to her great credit that Newsom (literally) plucks artistic triumph from the jaws of cloying whimsy.

Newsom has managed to lessen the twee factor of her last record... in the process crafting an album as bewitching as it is odd.

No album will ever move you quite like it, and if it weren't for a slight misstep, it would be perfect in almost every way.

The emotional peaks are so sharp, the wordplay so juicy, that all excesses are redeemed.

She has issued a treasure. She has floored us again.

The beating heart of Newsom's tales, at turns whimsical and melancholic, enchant with a simple calculus: A woman, a harp and a story to tell. [Dec 2006, p.190]

In a bid to make a startling epic work, she's concentrated on the form and neglected the content.

An album that sounds unlike anything else.

Utterly entrancing. [Dec 2006, p.141]

While it is technically flawless and masterfully executed, it makes for awkward listening. [#74, p.102]

So much that is sprightly about the debut is subsumed here by ambition, to be kind, and privilege, to be brutally accurate. [Feb/Mar 2007]

Hard to stomach. [19 Oct 2006, p.134]

Unfortunately, the grand concept appears to have been a bit too ambitious for the 24-year-old Newsom and her associates to pull off, since what she plucks and sings in her little-girl-lost warble never seems entirely integrated with the hovering orchestral parts that sound like bleed-over from a symphony rehearsal in the room next door.