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Since
The Milk-Eyed Mender was released, two and a half years have
passed, more or less. And...
Joanna Newsom spent a lot of time moving around — first
touring much of the United States and then Europe, over and
over and over. It was nice sometimes. There was an amazing tour
of Japan, Australia, and New Zealand (with Smog) and a beautiful
trip in Iceland where a couple of shows were played. Along the
road, there were lots of festivals to play as well: Bonaroo,
Sasquatch, Green Man, Rothskilde, ATP, and the Patti Smith-curated
Meltdown Festival…maybe even a few others. Joanna played
a benefit concert with her hero Neil Young too. She blew everyone
away at all these shows, by the way.
In moments not involving the harp, the singing and the audiences
around the world, there were other travels — like a car
trip through Portugal with her flute-playing friend Ariella
(one of the few people Joanna's played with so far onstage;
though shows of the near-future will hopefully involve many
other players) and a few weeks in Costa Rica on a family kayaking
vacation. At some point in there, Joanna moved from San Francisco
back to the hills of northern California.
The eleven or so months preceding the recording of Ys were spent
like this (take it, Jo!):
Two of the songs were already written by the time I came up
with the plan to set them to orchestral accompaniment. Three
more were written from the ground up with the intention to orchestrate
them in mind. All are intended to be playable with or without
accompaniment, and I've already played them solo in a live context
quite a bit. Vocals and harp parts were recorded first, with
Steve Albini. The main reason for starting this way was that
Van Dyke wanted to base his arrangements on a final version
of the songs, not "scratch" versions, given the fact
that I tend to improvise and vary each performance slightly.
Van Dyke felt that every nuance of the performance would inform
his arrangements. A happy byproduct of this necessary order
of events was that the vocals and harp were recorded in a climate
of quietness, ease, and spontaneity, allowing for the retention
of a sense of intimacy and immediacy. The goal I had in mind
was for the harp and vocals to feel like they were developing
unawares of the presence of the orchestra, unburdened by any
of the self-consciousness/formality/ austerity/stiltedness this
might provoke....as if the orchestra is hanging in a hallucinatory
shimmer around the more substantial harp and voice.
Albini mic'd the harp in an insane and never-before-done manner!
I'd love to describe it further but I don't want to give away
his ideas, in case he wants to do it again sometime.
Van Dyke was then given the vocal and harp tracks, along with
a pile of notes from me (mostly non-technical, i.e. describing
moods, colors, colors,images, scenes and concepts I wanted to
project or produce in each song, line-by-line, bar-by-bar).
In the months that followed, he'd send me various drafts of
the arrangements, and I'd send him back notes about what worked
for me and what didn't.Everything he sent, from day one, was
amazing and lovely; the struggle, in editing and refining the
drafts, mostly centered on trying to come up with arrangements
that reflected Van Dyke's singular compositional voice and ideas,
but still resonated completely with me and felt seamlessly bound
to my own music. This took many drafts!
Eventually I went to LA to work directly with him in his studio,
combing though the arrangements bar-by-bar, till both of us
felt happy with the result, and both felt a sense of ownership
and closeness to it. All the arrangement work took approximately
eight months. The orchestral recording sessions took place in
the spring, over three days, with an additional day at the end
for vocal harmonies, percussion, and Van Dyke's accordion. Van
Dyke conducted the orchestra. He is a great conductor.
The engineer for these sessions was Tim Boyle, who did an amazing
job. The recording was done in analog (as was, of course, the
session with Steve); many of the younger orchestral musicians
had never recorded to tape before...and the older players hadn't
recorded to tape for years (this is in LA, remember). There
was much ado and freaking- out at the sound of tape rewinding.
Mixing was done in New York City by Jim O'Rourke. He ruled so
much. I'm a huge admirer of all his work and I couldn't think
of anybody else who matches his combination of symphonic/ classical
literacy (in both arrangement and engineering terms) with experimentalism
and analog-fluency. He made the record sound the way I wanted
it to sound. He edited quite a bit, and tweaked and carved it,
allowing the songs to be at the center of the record, above
and beyond all the instrumental influences. Just about every
track on the whole album is in constant flux, and Jim was able
to achieve the hallucinatory orchestral wash-effect I wanted,
with parts rising up and dropping in and out almost weightlessly,
disappearing without much notice and reappearing as if they'd
been there the whole time. …and that's just about how
it happened!
…thank you, Ms. Newsom. As the record was being conceived,
written, recorded and completed, more requests for shows and
more shows and albums and personal appearances and interviews
and correspondence of all kinds were pouring in. What little
could be afforded to do was done and the rest was put off until
the album was done.
The release date for Ys is November 14, 2006. Joanna will tour
America in October, November and December and consider what
to do with the rest of the world afterwards. |
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YS
Drag City
November 2006 |
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