#JOANNA NEWSOM YS LYRICS FULL#

In fact, it is difficult for me to write this review and listen to Ys at the same time because my focus is pulled inexorably towards the songs, even after a month of nearly unbroken listening.

#JOANNA NEWSOM YS LYRICS FULL#

Newsom’s compositions are full of such varied textures and moods that the danger is not that they will lose your attention, but that they will demand it. Five songs sprawl for a total of 55 minutes, demanding much of today’s set-it-and-forget-it listening audience, but rewarding it oh so greatly.Īlthough the shortest song on Ys, “Cosmia”, is over seven minutes long, the album is surprisingly brisk. Ys the album is as epic as the legend of Ys, the mythical city of ancient Brittany. Real poets care about words, and on Ys, Joanna Newsom pays true homage to their shapes, sounds, and power to elicit emotion, not just describe it.

It requires, among other things, a love for language for its own sake, not just as a means for expressing one’s feelings.

To write poetry does not require a supernatural, deeper-than-thou ability to experience emotion. Newsom is indeed a poet, particularly because she meets one criteria of poet-dom better than just about anyone writing lyrics today. But I feel confident after immersing myself in Joanna Newsom’s much-anticipated Ys, that Ms. One should never, and I mean never, use the word “poet” lightly - not with creative writing majors, not with Rod McKuen, and certainly not with popular music artists.

Joanna newsom ys lyrics