Long ago, in the land of fairies and unicorns, there lived a happy, jaunty people, with jingling bells on their shoes and broadswords in their knickers. Now, I wasn't alive then, but I can say with 100% certainty that they listened to music like this. In case you live in a hole filled with feces, you've likely heard a thing or two about Ms. Joanna Newsom. Maybe you heard that she sings like a 4-year old girl, or that she has very precise enunciation on certain consanants, or that she plays the harp, or that she's a member of the national front. Well, all of those things are true. Except the part about the national front. Which led me to say, upon hearing this information from my feces-hole, "man, that sure sounds like something that I don't need to ever hear." Well, maybe it was the excrement in my ears, but the second i climbed from my hole and put this cd into a cd-playback-device, I was proven wrong, more wrong than the TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11TH.
Now, I've heard the Ys LP, which preceded this by a few months, and was not particularly impressed. Yes, the songs were pretty good, and this chick can write one heck of a melody, which she piles one after the other throughout each song. But the sound was marred by lots of incidental and unnecessary string arrangements and a very shiny veneer. Which, thankfully, the EP lacks.
In Ireland, apparently, "Colleen" is a name given to your everyday generic female-type, like Jane Doe here in the civilized world. Coincidentally, it is also what the first track of this EP is called. It's rife with banjos and accordians and such, and is what we in the industry call "a rollicking abstract story-folk song." Ms. Newsom squeaks and wails about some whales (ha! I'm a fucking genius!) and baleen, and falling into the ocean or some shit. Well, it all spells a big heaping pile of REPEAT LISTENS!!! This is the centerpiece of the disc, being the only new song in the bunch, but...
"Colleen" is outshined immediately by a stripped-down rendition of "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie" from the "Milk-Eyed Mender" LP. This is the kind of song you play for a girl you just met and you want to show your sensitive side before you fuck her and give her a fake phone number. The tune itself is reduced to a duet between Joanna and some guy in her band, who sings kind of like a male Joanna Newsom, and what sounds like the ol' harp and maybe an acoustic guitar.
When one steers their musical ship down the Tunics-and-Pantaloons River, you can't begrudge them for crafting EPIC songs, like the closer, "Cosmia." A leaps-and-bounds improvement over the original (from the Ys LP), this track stretches to almost 13.5 minutes. Now I know that may seem like a long time to sit on your thumb and listen to a song, especially in these POST SEPTEMBER 11TH times, but i swear if you just stop looking for osama for about 13.5 minutes and listen to this song you won't regret it.
Hey, now you should go out to your local MEGAstore and but it. It's only an EP so it won't cut into your skag budget too much. And you know what they say: "Fuck you!"
--(mk)
No comments:
Post a Comment