Reviews

Joanna Newsom

Y’s Street Band

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Review Date: 2007-05-02

Joanna Newsom’s music may not make you think a lot about camping, but they do share one thing in common… they’re intense (in tents, get it?! Har har).

As if Joanna hadn’t given us enough with last year’s ridiculously beautiful Y’s, she had to go out and drop a three track gem just to remind us that she’s A-number-one, duchess of nu-folk. As if that wasn’t enough, she went and named the EP as a Bruce Springsteen reference. FUCKING BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN!

Colleen, a previously unreleased track, is for those times that you’re sitting around thinking “maaaaaan, it would be really cool if a renaissance fair came to town right now.” It sounds like some mix of Celtic, Indian and pirate’s sea chanteys played by the band at Medieval Times for your birthday as you eat greasy chicken (no utensils of course) and cheer on your favourite feudal-age fighter. It is at home with the songs of Y’s, but its omission seems reasonable as it does deviate from the overall feel of Y’s.

The new version of Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie allows the song to be saved from the low-fi recording that didn’t do Milk Eyed Mender a lot of justice. It is by far the lesser of Y’s Street Band’s three songs, but then again that’s like talking about the dumbest astrophysicist. It is a gentle middle to Colleen’s riverdance start and Cosmia’s soaring and intricate end.

Yeah that’s right. The last song is a new version of Cosmia, about 6 minutes longer than on Y’s. Gone are Van Dyke Park’s theatrical string movements and in their place are banjos. I know what you’re probably thinking, and you’re wrong. No one fucked up here, the banjos add a whole new dynamic to the song and re-create one of the high points of Y’s forcing listeners to take the songs in a totally new light.

The only real complaint I have (besides not putting more tracks on it, even though the current crop of three times in at nearly a half an hour) is that of all the songs from Milk Eyed Mender to rerecord, it was Clam, Crab that was chosen and not Peach, Plum, Pear, which I think was really the highlight of Mender.

Score: 8.5

- Michael Bulko