Albums of the Decade: Ys
by Liz ColvillePage 2 of 2
Listeners of Ys came for the beauty, but stayed for the emotional content. We did as Newsom did with the myth of Ys and took the album as our own, throwing our own experiences and conjectures onto the songs. It's possible to relate to simple, digestible lines like, "Oh, desire," from "Sawdust and Diamonds," and the way Newsom sings it doesn't hurt. Even the more bizarre crux of the song—the firm insistence that "I wasn't born from a whistle/or milked from a thistle at twilight" is relatable: buried in those lines is a meaning that makes sense to us. But just try to articulate it in words. The experience really isn't that far off from hearing a foreign language: we catch familiar sounds and are drawn in to thinking we understand by universal inflections. But it's hard to spell out what that line, or any of "Sawdust and Diamonds," is about.
The fun of music is that you don't have to explain in words what you sense in lyric and melody. It's mostly critics who feel compelled to put a finger on what's beneath the sounds. But Newsom won't let us, and in doing so, she reminds us that the musician, even, in her case, with all her years of training and perfectionism, should also be allowed to have fun. She went further than most might think to have it. True, Ys is packed with words she can't get out fast enough, and which we can't grasp the meaning of. To skeptics, this might come off seeming like a budding poet who hasn't yet honed editing skills. But if the album sounds to you like a riotous banquet of words, that's actually one interpretation Newsom probably wouldn't correct.
Newsom told the Wire that "decadence," a big element in the myth of Ys, "figures very prominently" on the album. "Either the idea of decadence, or I guess a searching or longing or wondering that is rooted in a desire for any self-gratification, selfishness, self-centeredness, which is a sort of decadence I guess. I try to convey that by using language which places as the goal this over the top thing, you know, like fiefs and that sort of thing," she explained, then laughed.
The album itself is "this over the top thing." But drawn out at varying speeds over about an hour, the challenges of Ys—its reputation, swathed in awe, curiosity and frustrations about paganism, ornateness, maximalism—are dismantled through listening. Newsom demonstrates virtuosity in a language that nobody—not even she—fully understands, as if to remind us that music isn't burdened by the same obligations as people, and shouldn't be persuaded to be.
Related Stories
Albums of the Decade: Kid A
Haha.. we were kidding about all those other ones. This is obviously, objectively, the best record ever of the decade.
Dec 23, 2009
Albums of the Decade: Tegan and Sara's The Con
Breakup records should not be this good.
Dec 23, 2009
Albums of the Decade: Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
After five years and three albums spent building something, Wilco decided to tear it down and start fresh. The music industry did the same thing. But it didn't exactly have a choice.
Dec 22, 2009
Albums of the Decade: Arcade Fire's Funeral
With just ten songs, Arcade Fire successfully mourned the loss of multiple relatives, helped us discover a new way of dealing with adversity, and changed the face of indie-rock.
Dec 21, 2009
Albums of the Decade: The Knife's Silent Shout
With the music industry in a perpetual downward spiral for much of the decade, it became difficult to blame bands for licensing their songs to corporations. When the money paid for records as brilliant as this one, it was impossible.
Dec 18, 2009
Comments (1)
Showing 1-1 of 1
