Two unique folk artists will visit Japan this month to promote their sophomore releases: 24-year-old Joanna Newsom and, more than 35 years her senior, Vashti Bunyan, who has recently come out of a decades-long retirement.
Newsom, a California native, has a voice that comes as something of a shock: It sometimes starts with a kind of squeak and then soars high and shrill, or drops to a warm purr. Utterly anachronistic, it sounds as if it should be accompanied by the pops and crackles of an old 78 rpm record.
Newsom is also an accomplished player of the harp--not the kind that goes in your pocket and is played by blues artists like Little Walter, but the big one that everyone gets when they ascend to heaven, and which was played by Harpo Marx. Her latest album, Ys, has drawn near unanimous rave reviews from critics, while polarizing the general music-buying public, who seem to either find her voice and the album's very long songs either grating or pure genius.
Scoring an underground hit with her first album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, in 2004, Newsom has been lumped in with the relatively recent avant-folk movement that includes charismatic hippy Devendra Banhart, Vetiver and lo-fi troubadour Smog.
While the aforementioned artists have their charms, none rival Newsom for pure musicianship and audacity. Recorded with producer Steve Albini (Nirvana, Cheap Trick), and with string arrangements from Brian Wilson-collaborator Van Dyke Parks, the six long tracks on Ys don't follow typical pop songwriting forms. While there are sections that could be thought of as verses or choruses, they are so expansive that the music seems to move seamlessly from one section to another, as if Newsom were navigating rather than writing the songs.
Chuck out the CD and you still have something wonderful, as Newsom's lyrics are loaded with archaic turns of phrase and evocative figurative language, and are as fun to read as they are to hear sung.
While Joanna Newsom sounds like a voice from the past, Vashti Bunyan actually is a voice from the past. Originally groomed for stardom by former Rolling Stones manager and producer Andrew Loog Oldham, legend has it that Bunyan chucked her pop music career in the late '60s and fled London seeking a simpler life.
Sometime in 1969 she returned to the city and presented producer Joe Boyd (Nick Drake, R.E.M) with a batch of quiet folk songs she had written on her travels.
Boyd rounded up members of The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention to back Bunyan and recorded Just Another Diamond Day.
Unfortunately, the album was completely ignored upon its release, and Bunyan quit the music business again. This time, it seemed, for good.
But over the years, Just Another Diamond Day became a cult item, and as the music of like-minded artists such as Nick Drake came back in vogue, so did Bunyan's lost LP.
All of this occurred, however, without Bunyan knowing, until one day she plugged her name into an Internet search engine and discovered that she had fans clamoring for a reissue of the album on CD.
Buoyed by the interest, Bunyan reissued her debut and recorded Lookaftering in 2005 with Newsom, Devendra Banhart and other admirers.
It picks up right where the pastoral folk of Just Another Diamond Day left off, with Bunyan's fragile, flutelike voice seemingly unaffected by the years.
Although Newsom and Bunyan are from different generations, they are obliterating any notions of folk music as passe. Their quiet introspective music is in many ways among the most adventurous around.
Joanna Newsom will play Feb. 16, 7 p.m.
at Tokuzo in Nagoya. (052) 733-3709; Feb. 17, 6:30 p.
m. at Bridge in Osaka. (06) 6634-0080; Feb.
19, 7:30 p.m. at Urban Guild in Kyoto.
(075) 212-1125; Feb. 21, 7:30 p.m.
at Omi Gakudo in Hatsudai, Tokyo. (03) 5353-6937; Feb. 25, 7 p.
m. at O-West in Shibuya, Tokyo.
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