Browse by Artist: NEWSOM, JOANNA

Artist:	NEWSOM, JOANNA
Title:	The Milk-Eyed Mender
Label:	DRAG CITY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	DC 263CD

"Drag City takes great pleasure in introducing to you a remarkable new musical singer, songwriter and all-around talent, Joanna Newsom. Joanna's music has more of an affinity with the folk revival of the 60s, or the bluegrass movement at present, than with most contemporary 'folk' (or 'anti-folk') scenes. Affinities aside, her style could hardly be called bluegrass; nor does it evoke the pastoral tonalities of 60s folk: she sings about whalebones, sleep, grammar, mollusks, accumulation, automobiles, owls, burning boats, string collections, milk, teeth, bridges, balloons, cake, colors, and kin, all in an otherworldly, ragged-sweet voice that defies convention. Her harp arrangements are at times ethereal and delicate, at others galloping and ornate, but never overwrought -- presenting not so much a mere fusion of influences, as an inquiry into the places where those influences naturally intersect. She considers the late composer Ruth Crawford Seeger (who was one of American folk music's earliest advocates, as well as a vanguardist composer) to be a major influence, because of Seeger's ability and desire to reconcile the tenets of experimentalism with her love for a beautiful melody."

Artist:	NEWSOM, JOANNA
Title:	Sprout and the Bean
Label:	DRAG CITY
Format:	CD
Price:	$5.00
Catalog #:	DC 287CD

"Joanna Newsom's music captures what we've all lost -- freedom to believe in the power of the imagination. Neither childlike nor completely 'adult,' Joanna's music exists in a space all its own. Other worlds are alive, not in the ether, but inside the mind. In 'Sprout and the Bean,' she schools us all. The video takes us on an adventure from class room, with chalk creatures coming to life on the blackboard, to a green valley and a chorus of Joannas magically appearing. 'Ask the councillor, ask the king,' Joanna Newsom's 'Sprout and the Bean' is a magical thing."

Artist:	NEWSOM, JOANNA
Title:	Ys
Label:	DRAG CITY
Format:	CD
Price:	$13.50
Catalog #:	DC 303CD

"Five songs, fifty-five minutes, what-an-album! Ys is to Ms. Newsom a dream collaboration between her voice and harp and a full orchestra -- a sound many of us fans have thought we were hearing when listening with closed eyes at her concert performances. Songs familiar to Joanna's following are a big part of Ys, having been performed in concert over the past year -- but not with the arrangements you'll find on four of the five songs here (one song being 'classic' Joanna; which is to say, solo). The songs, conceived with harp and voice and tracked as such by Steve Albini, were arranged with kindness and love by the legendary Van Dyke Parks over several months of correspondence and collaboration with Joanna. At the end of the day, the instrument count included strings, woodwinds, and brass plus dulcimer, marimba, various percussive instruments (including a horse skull!), banjo, mandolin, electric bass guitar (played by master of mellow Lee Sklar), electric guitar (played by jazz-great -- and-definitive-MAD-magazine-authority, Grant Geisseman), and accordion played by Van Dyke himself. If this seems like a bit of an overfull house -- wait'll you hear the mix Jim O'Rourke made of it! It's light and lilting, with Joanna front and center and sounds blowing and tearing and swelling around her, in perfect consort. The wide-screen beauty of Ys is due to, among other things, a scrupulously all-analog production involving forty-odd tracks spread over two synched-up 24-track tape machines, mixed to tape and mastered at Abbey Road, home of the all-analog mastering path!"

Artist:	NEWSOM, JOANNA
Title:	Joanna Newsom & the Ys Street Band E.P.
Label:	DRAG CITY
Format:	CD
Price:	$11.00
Catalog #:	DC 336CD

"A new Joanna Newsom record already? Don't rub your eyes and ears just yet -- it's 'just' an EP. But with all new arrangements and performances of two already-classic Joanna songs and the debut of a brand-new song, it's a solid short-play record at least -- and another inspiring slice of Newsom at best! Joanna Newsom & the Ys Street Band E.P. was performed by Joanna's road-tested band: Kevin Barker, Neal Morgan, Dan Cantrell and Ryan Francesconi, with Joanna Newsom singing and playing her harp. Recorded and mixed in its entirety by Tim Green at The Plant Studios in Sausalito, California, Joanna Newsom & the Ys Street Band E.P. is an all-new, live and lively look into the world of one of today's fastest-growing young artists."

Previous Page Index of Artists Next Page