But I also felt like it needed some sort of ballast, or balance, next to it, to reflect the other elements of the record its innate violence. So it has all this detail and carefulness to it, which was really important to me and relates very closely to the record. I like how it contrasted this finely rendered, carefully composed front cover - the painting is information-dense, formal, and stylized it looks the way something looks when a painter spends a year on it, which is what Benjamin did. I liked how violent and cryptic it felt it's such a daunting word to encounter. I also liked the power of the word itself. The myth is also significant to me because of the way that I encountered it, which relates to one of the huge events the record is about. But the main themes that emerge out of that myth are really close to the themes on the record - mortality, decadence, an excess of water, isolation, rebirth. So none of the songs directly allude to that myth. was the last thing that I chose, after all the songs and the cover art were finished.Interview with Pitchfork (2006) A conversation between Brian Howe and Joanna Newsom, about her album Ys (2006) My favorite book of all time is The Last Unicorn by Peter S. But I also love William Faulkner, Thomas Pynchon, Kenneth Patchen, Joyce Carol Oates, Philip Roth, Mark Helprin (who wrote a beautiful book called Winter's Tale), and Kurt Vonnegut. Well, Nabokov is definitely my favorite author, though I feel strange calling him an "influence," since I can't trace the ways in which his writing may or may not have seeped into my own.
![ys joanna newsom wikipedia ys joanna newsom wikipedia](https://static.infofamouspeople.com/avatar_thumb/300w/bn2tpqparu3s8injnbkg_headshots_joanna-newsom-3.jpg)
Which sometimes prevents people from listening to the songs the way I would like them to be listened to. My voice in combination with the harp - which, by the way, I use because I've played it my entire life, not to make some statement about the harp - somehow has … coloured people's interpretations of the music and projected an idea of childlike or fairytale quality or innocence.But I think the harp has been viewed in one particular way for so long, and has been limited for so long, that I feel like I am really interested in stretching the boundaries of what it's capable of doing and how it's perceived. I also don't want to feel bound to the harp, I'd be interested in bringing other instruments in at some time.
![ys joanna newsom wikipedia ys joanna newsom wikipedia](https://uploads.celebheightwiki.com/images/26/benny-dayal.jpg)
That there is a bass in the harp - there is a way to create a rhythmic sense without drums - there's a way to have all sorts of textural variations and expressive variations. I'm really interested in the harp as a fully actualized, self-contained way of presenting songs. You know, like they have songs that are fully realized, complete songs, and then they think "How do we make this special? - Ooh, let's bring the harp in!" and they kind of want a harpist to play a glissando and play some heavenly noise in the background. Partly because I feel like many people view the harp as this kind of gimmick.