It’s the Illinois for 2006 – the innovative, expansive, and bold record that has quickly become everyone’s favorite of the year – so I feel obliged to at least mention Ys, the sophomore effort from post-post-rock, classical-folk-harpist Joanna Newsom.
Let me first kill any music-snob cred I may have had and say this: I can’t deal with her voice. I’ve tried, but I can’t. It’s less grating than on The Milk-Eyed Mender (a record I on-and-off enjoyed in spite of this), but it still is a serious impediment to my appreciation of her music.
As for the record itself, is it the best of the year? It’s hard to say. I guess it might be the best, but it certainly has no chance of being my favorite. I don’t dislike it, but neither does it appeal to me all that much.
If you don’t want to read the extended explanation for why, check out the review on I Rock Cleveland which sums up everything I’m going to say far more succinctly.
Everyone says you have to give it time, so I suppose there’s a chance I’ll grow to love it. But I’ve already given it more than a few spins and it still isn’t doing too much for me. Perhaps I’m simply too wedded to, y’know, tunes and choruses and stuff, but I can’t ever imagine this being among my favorites. An artistic achievement, sure. Sonically complex and lyrically challenging, absolutely. More fun to listen to than some verse-chorus-verse indie pop? Nope. To be completely frank, it’s more than a little bit boring. Or, if “boring” is not quite the right word, how about “unable to hold my attention.”
I will say that, despite averaging over 11 minutes per song, it seems to go by much quicker than I expected. Still, I’m not sure whether that’s a positive (it never dragged) or a negative (it rarely grabbed me enough to keep me focused). It’s probably some of both, but it can’t be entirely a good sign that after a fair number of times though I couldn’t hum a bar of any song or even tell you anything distinguishing about one of them. There are a lot of interesting moments, but none that stood out long enough for me to process them and remember, so the whole record still feels like a bit of a blur.
Once again, this might be a situation where if I can ever get myself to give it enough of a chance, I might finally “get” it. That said, I never have enough time in the day to listen to the music I already love, so I’m not sure how much time I’m willing to invest trying to force myself to like this. It may have to just be something where I appreciate the skill that went into it, but personally take a pass on it.
I certainly wouldn’t condemn anyone who rates it highly, though I am a bit surprised at the almost universal lauding it has received. I mean, I don’t dislike the record and would probably give it a solid 7/10 for ambition, skill, and scope, if not for melody. But based on the current Metacritic rankings that would be the third-to-last score. No one else finds it endlessly meandering? No one wants to declare the orchestration intrusive? Her voice doesn’t bug anyone else? Is everyone so happy to find a record that sounds different that they’re willing to overlook imperfections that would inspire scathing reviews in other contexts?
Or do I really hate this record more than just about everyone? It doesn’t feel like I hate it, but the numbers don’t lie…
As I said, the songs are insanely long and I’m not going to burn 20 megs to host one of them, but I’m sure you could find your way to listen to a few via the Hype Machine, or on eMusic. Given how many people will make it their #1 for the year, it’s certainly worth hearing so you can make up your own mind.