Ever wonder if the universe is baiting you?
See, it's not that I dislike her or even have strong feeling about her or that I think people shouldn't listen to her or are fools for doing so. If a musician gives you special squishy feelings, makes you laugh or cry or shake your fist, or whatever: I do not stand in the way of your enjoyment.
I offer opinions insofar as my own feelings about the music are concerned, but I do not judge or criticize you. Moreover, as long as I feel a musician is making the music they want to make (as opposed to packaged shit that they know sells, like Celine Dion, Britney, or whatever), I say, godspeed to you and him/her.
It's just that, sometimes, I don't understand how the hipster mind operates.
Madrigals, early music, children's songs, fey British folk, psychedelia, harp music: these all exist. They have existed for centuries in some cases. Like twerpy spacey chick singing?
Buy a Joni Mitchell or Judy Collins record. Bizarre meandering lyrics? Send Jandek ten bucks.
Modern interpretation of Baroque classical, polyphony, and madrigals? Medieval Baebes, Rasputina, or what have you. Its all there, it didn't need to be reinvented; reintroduced, rather, in a more palatably hip format.
Re: the latter Baroquemadripolyphony genre and its forebears. Beyond my wife (who introduced me to this stuff) and myself, I don't think I've known anyone into the above genres. Ever.
I've never seen an album reviewed in Maximumrocknroll I don't recall the merits of versus ever being discussed in Forced Exposure.
I get weird looks when I spin some of this stuff for friends, what with its fa-la-la'ing, poncey phraseology, odd time signatures, and weird harmonies. I don't care, I think its pretty, even as I realize how lame it seems.
I don't know how many of you were around during the the 70s. I was, and I remember a time when every high school had a madrigals group (I think it had something to do with the popularity of the musical Camelot). They'd mostly perform around Christmastime, in full doublets and pointy princess hats, and sing about figgy pudding and how yon mistress' merrymaid doth gambol in the snowflakes whence she threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock and rode on in the friscalating dusklight.
I get the impression the madrigal folks were the people the chess club beat up. When I listen to madrigals and such, I love it, but I understand how it's perceived by most folks. Lame.
Not that I care or agree, I just recognize this perception.
So, Joanna Newsom.
Suddenly a harp-playing dryad with a weenie voice shows up and she's the shit.
Wha-huh? The cynic in me says that because she played with Smog, Steve "I wouldn't wipe my ass with the Cocteau Twins" Albini produce the album, Jim O'Rourke stopped by to remix it all, and she backs up her harp (a harp! a harp!
) with a wall of modern sound, all the critics and hipsters decided, "Say, there must something to this." Cynic me has a good point. But because Cynic me tends to go off half-cocked, I decided to listen to her more closely on iTunes.
And I'm still confused.
I like to think I'm pretty diverse in my musical tastes. Some of you probably figure I'm up to my nose in blues 78s and that I consider all music made after 1939 to be excreta dropped from the Devil's anus.
Not so. Running through my collection is like following an Amazon recommendation string from Johannes Ockeghem to Ken Vandermark.
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