Joanna Newsom Completes Work on New Album
Recently-unveiled Australian tour dates aside, news on Joanna Newsom can be hard to come by. That is, if you’ve limited your search to the music section of your local magazine rack/Borders/internet. Your favorite indie harpist with the most
divisiveunique voice can best be followed in fashion media these days.It’s fitting (no pun intended) then, that a big news update just arrived via W magazine, where Newsom appeared here, dressed up in Giorgio Armani and photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vınoodh Matadin. As I’m not much of a fashionista, it’s this part of the caption that truly caught my eye: “She recently finished work on a new album.”
New album, you say, but what/where/why/when/how? Sure, rumors flew this summer, but those didn’t pan out. Let’s look to those trusted fashion mags, yet again:
“Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon held court by the deejay booth while Joanna Newsom (in town recording her new album) chatted with her boyfriend, SNL’s Andy Samberg.”
That’s Vogue’s Sara Moonves on the opening of a new designer clothing shop in Japan, featuring designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy of label Rodarte, whom Newsom interviewed for Hobo magazine. Now why would Joanna Newsom be in Japan to record her follow-up to Ys? Sure, Ys collaborator Jim O’Rourke lives there now and… Okay, this shit just got real.
And the hexes heat covertly, like a slow low-flying turkey, like a Texan drying jerky but his meaty mitts can’t hurt me.
—(via slaughterhousejive)
i am blue, and unwell
(via floatingintheblue)
Though often heralded as a leader of the neofolk scene, 27-year-old Joanna Newsom doesn’t consider herself a folksinger. Her work—marked by her ethereal voice, narrative lyrics and solo harp accompaniment—blends elements of West African, bluegrass and avant-garde music and has also developed a following on the normally harder-edged indie rock scene. Newsom has been playing the harp since she was eight (she became obsessed with the instrument as a toddler and begged her parents to buy one for her) and began her career on Will “Bonnie Prince Billy” Oldham’s tour in 2002. Her debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was released in 2004 and was followed by Ys (2006). She recently finished work on a new album. — W.
Sawdust and Diamonds, by Joanna Newsom.
j. newsom
