Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Tiptoeing along the line joining Kate Bush to Björk, harp-wielding folkstrel Joanna Newsom leaves one in no doubt of her oddball credentials on Ys, five story-song fables of between seven and 17 minutes apiece on which her florid harp stylings and peculiar ickle-girly vocals are pushed further from the mainstream by Van Dyke Parks' equally idiosyncratic string arrangements. Rarely, if ever, has an artist so assiduously cultivated cult status, from the antique vocabulary of terms like "cleft" and "murthering", to the serpentine courses taken by pieces such as the inter-species love song "Monkey & Bear" and the ghostly, nautical "Sawdust & Diamonds", on which she brandishes a sense of the dark power of the ocean. "Only Skin" is the longest and most involved song, a pantheistic piece in which opposites - dream and wakefulness, earth and water, animate and inanimate, day and night - shade into each other as Newsom relates the epiphanic experience of rescuing an injured bird, taking it up a mountain to recuperate, and watching it soar off again.
DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Only Skin', 'Monkey & Bear', 'Sawdust & Diamonds'
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments