Ys.

Joanna Newsom. <i>Drag City</i>. If you find Björk staid, this is just the “freak folk” album for you.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Is Björk too normal for you? Then check out Joanna Newsom, who elevates eccentricity to a fine art on her second album. Sometimes tagged “freak folk,” among other simplistic labels, the Bay Area resident really belongs to no category. Accompanying herself on harp, she delivers sprawling, hallucinatory tales in a voice that’s part angry child, part nervous adult, exploring spirituality, desire, and the natural order of things in unsettling verbal torrents. Underscoring the eclectic soul of the project, Newsom’s parts were recorded by punk rock vet Steve Albini, best known for sessions with Nirvana, while Van Dyke Parks, Brian Wilson’s collaborator on his weirdest works 40 years ago, coproduced and wrote the cinematic orchestral arrangements. Ys. (pronounced “ees”), which covers a mere five tracks in just under an hour, may strike impatient listeners as unbearably pretentious. Others will be delighted by its audacity.

Fact:

Mother Jones was founded as a nonprofit in 1976 because we knew corporations and billionaires wouldn't fund the type of hard-hitting journalism we set out to do.

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

Fact:

Today, reader support makes up about two-thirds of our budget, allows us to dig deep on stories that matter, and lets us keep our reporting free for everyone. If you value what you get from Mother Jones, please join us with a tax-deductible donation today so we can keep on doing the type of journalism 2024 demands.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate