Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom
Joanna Newsom is an American singer-songwriter, harpist and actress. After recording and self-releasing two EPs in 2002, Newsom signed to the independent label Drag City. Her debut album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, was released in 2004 to acclaim and garnered Newsom an underground following. She received wider exposure with Ys (2006), which reached number 134 on the Billboard 200 and was nominated for
"I have a lot of interest in interior rhyming; not just rhyming at the end of the lines, but playing around with rhymes within the lines, playing with where the syllabic emphases in the sentences are, lining those up at strange moments in the line of the song. I’m not sure if that comes across or not."
"My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because Ive played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has … coloured peoples interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence. Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to."
"Go to sleep, you stunning sky, gently creep, cunning by A quiet hum is amplified by your thumb that you suck dry A hundred raging waters snare the lonely sigh Hold your breath and clasp at Cassiopeia."
"Picking through your pocket lining, well what is this? Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?"
"And though our bones, they may break And our souls separate, why the long face? And though our bodies recoil From the grip of the soil, why the long face?"
"Wolf-spider, crouch in your funnel nest. If I knew you, once, now I know you less. In the sinking sand, where weve come to rest, have I had a hand in your loneliness?"
