Let me begin by conceding that I feel very unqualified to write anything about this song, or anything else on Ys. I acknowledge that, particularly coming late to this music as I am, I ought to wait and see if its charisma will stand the test of time. But I don't want to wait. I need no more time than the length of the album to affirm that this is a phenomenal work of music. I have no reservations about saying that Ys is among the most affecting, stunning, and unprecedented albums I have ever heard—and I don't anticipate eating my words any time soon.
This song, the album's centerpiece, stands alone as the single track that features just Newsom, voice and harp, without the support of Van Dyke Parks' orchestral arrangements. Parks' strings do anything but get in the way of Newsom's—rather, they complement her splendidly—but there's a confessional intensity to hearing our heroine alone, plucking, squawking, and yelping away—doing, in other words, what she does best. The decision to situate this track at the heart of the album was itself a choice of genius; if Ys is a portrait of Newsom's psyche, this song represents the most vulnerable, most intimate center of that psyche, and the contrast with its fleshier neighbors sharply emphasizes this tenderness.
This is as close as music comes to a perfect rendering of emotion. From the very first chord, all aspects of the performance work in tandem: the harp strikes, Newsom's frayed warble follows, and the song rocks back and forth between them like the slow, imperfect antiphony of a tolling bell and silence. And indeed, as soon as Newsom introduces a bell in the second stanza of her lyrics—an image that persists throughout the song—its presence in the music, in the high-low alternation of the vocal melody and chords, becomes unmistakable. "Hear it fall forevermore," Newsom intones, then repeats, her voice breaking on "fall" and wilting as the line descends to its conclusion. The song does not wallow in melancholy, however; before it even has time to resonate, the falling bell is swept up in a roil of arpeggios from the harp. The tide has come in: "Drop a bell off the dock," Newsom proclaims, half narrating, half pleading. "Blot it out in the sea." Such tone painting surges between the music and text for the entirety of the song, but it never takes over or becomes tasteless.
The mastery of Newsom's songwriting lies in its simultaneous stability and weightlessness, its equipoise of emotional outpouring and structural discipline. Every voice-crack and rhyme has a place in the logic of the song, but somehow nothing feels calculated. Much has been made of her long and laborious process in creating this album, and these efforts are evident in the intricacy, elaborateness, and sheer scope of the compositions. Yet what truly shines through, and what makes Ys so extraordinary, is its wisdom. "Sawdust & Diamonds" overflows with suffering and trauma—
And though my wrists and my waist seemed so easy to break
Still, my dear, I'd have walked you to the edge of the water.
And they will recognize all the lines of your face
In the face of the daughter, of the daughter, of my daughter.
Darling, we will be fine, but what was yours and mine
Appears to me a sandcastle that the gibbering wave takes.
But if it's all just the same, then will you say my name,
Say my name in the morning, so that I know when the wave breaks?
—yet it allows for beauty and consolation as well. Newsom doesn't belittle her pain, she hasn't transcended or surpassed it, but she is able to get outside of it and render it, magnificently and perceptively, in music. She isn't the first to do so, but she is doubtlessly among the most skillful. Ultimately, there is little to do other than admire, applaud, and take pleasure in what she has created.
kianamaiart
romaincrisis
jacobvanloon
vaporwave
germansingergirl
areudirty
blakekathryn
