Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender
(Drag City)
Throughout the 20th century a lot of musicians were, and probably still are, interested in writing music that somehow deals with childlike behavior. While it's resulted in some interesting music it very rarely gives us something that is actually like a child. Rather, what happens is that you get a strange piece of music with an intellectualized, adult replication of childhood. This is because, as adults, we are unable to enter the mind of a child. We only know what we can observe and have no way of ever going back to the state of mind we were in when we were five years old.
Joanna Newsom is a harpist/keyboardist and singer/songwriter residing in the bay area and currently attends Mills College where she studies the harp while still finding time to play keyboards with non-descript indie rockers The Pleased, record harp material for the brilliant Nervous Cop CD, and write some of the most striking and absorbing songs I've heard in years. With The Milk-Eyed Mender, her first album after two self-released EPs sold on tour with Will Oldham and Smog, she seems poised to become a legend. Her songs are bare and with only a few exceptions feature nothing more than a harp and her childlike and undeniably striking voice. When it comes to understanding the mind of a child she's no different from the rest of us, but she seems to have a much better idea of how to recreate the feelings and experiences of pre-pubescence better than almost anyone else before her. The music fills me with the same sense of wonder and amazement that I imagine a child to have when encountering new things. Look, I'm moving my arm! Look, I can speak and you understand me!
Of the album's weak points, and there are very few, is that at 12 tracks totaling almost an hour of music I find myself growing somewhat tired by track 11. I live by the wisdom "Always leave them wanting more" and since many of the songs here are quite similar one or two of them could have easily been left off and the album would hold up under its own weight far better. All is redeemed at the end, however, with "Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie", a song that shines like a diamond and in no specific terms delights and amazes. Owners of her self-released EPs will also find a number of those songs re-recorded for the album. Some songs benefit greatly: "Peach, Plum, Pear" is now played on a harpsichord and features some stunning multi-tracked vocals. Others suffer in the same way the Mountain Goats' Tallahassee suffered. A certain rustic quality is lost without the hiss and reverb of the Walnut Whales EP.
Quibbles about details aside, The Milk-Eyed Mender is an astonishing work. The lyrical content is whimsical and skittish, never stopping to focus on any one thing for too long. It also helps that when she sings she actually sounds a lot like you might imagine a child home alone running around her house, having the full run of the place because the parents are out. She belts out tunes about the most fleeting of cares without a trace of inhibition, never touching on subject matter that is overly dramatic or "meaningful" in the conventional sense of the word but still somehow elicits a powerful and immediate response from the listener. When she performs people are entranced like children at the movies. Joanna Newsom seems to have come from nowhere only to give us a fully realized and gloriously unique musical expression. I get the chills just thinking about it.
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