Shazam’s Music Of The Decade: Joanna Newsom
From the fringes of the anti-folk movement and blessed with a peculiar high-pitched voice that easily induced a shocking early impression - rather similar to the first time we heard Kate Bush - this angelic harp and piano player from Nevada produced arguably the most ambitious album of the last 10 years.
‘Ys’ was a giant step from Joanna Newsom’s first official album, ‘The Milk-Eyed Mender’. With only five lengthy tracks, the shortest being the seven-minute story ‘Cosmia’, it resembled at times a classical suite divided in five movements. The record expanded beyond the limits of traditional songwriting into a world of poetic storytelling and creative instrumentation defying all rules in current pop music.
Helped by a holy trinity of alternative collaborators – Steve Albini engineering, Jim O’Rourke producing and the legendary Brian Wilson arranger Van Dyke Parks at the orchestrations - Newson impressed critics and audiences alike, leaving the seal of a true original. The world eagerly awaits her new material that’s rumoured to be delivered sometime in 2010.
