Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A real treat - but not for everyone, 22 Feb 2007
I confess that I discovered this album after hearing some of 'This Side of the Blue' on a TV advert! After humming the same few bars irritatingly for a few days it might have ended there. But then my brother made me listen to a dubious recording of 'Book of Right On' on the internet and I was hooked. These two songs alone are a good enough reason to buy this album.
For those people who like comparisons, Joanna Newsom's voice could be (very loosely) likened to Bjork, Melanie or even Janis Joplin. She has an unusual voice which can be sweet and vulnerable as a child or harsh and nasal like a hedonistic 30-a-day jazz singer.
However, the comparisons pretty much end there. How many other musicians combine quirky, vivid lyrics, with an eccentric range of musical influences and make the result even stranger by using the harp as the predominant instrument?
Joanna Newsom defies convention and convenient musical labelling.
This album is unique. There are hauntingly lovely melodies and intriguing lyrics. The harp playing is at times beautiful enough to bring tears to your eyes. Her voice changes remarkably according to the particular piece of music.
'Song' does not do justice to the result.
While I defy anyone to criticise the harp playing, not everyone will enjoy this album due to Joanna Newsom's unconventional voice, and unusual style. However, for those with an open mind this is a real treat
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
I do not know my way to the sea, 4 Feb 2007
Joanna Newsom is one of the weirdest folksters around today, with her trippy little pastoral melodies and that incredibly weird, stoned-fairy voice. And with "The Milk Eyed Mender," her debut album, Newsom embroiders a series of offbeat little harp songs with her unique lyrics and wonky voice.
"We sailed away on a winter's day/With fate as malleable as clay/But ships are fallible, I say/And the nautical, like all things, fades," Newsom sings mellowly in the opening song, over a plucky harp melody and a soft murmur of other instruments. She sings of crabby canaries, Narnia references, and "a thimble's worth of milky moon."
From there she veers into the trippling ballad "Sprout and the Bean," before slipping off into more eccentric harp-folk, laced with constellations, dragons, and "the book of right-on." She dabbles in haunting bluesy pop, languid little ballads full of nature's beauty, bizarre piano lo-fi stuff, shimmering folk songs like "Swansea," a countryish folk song, and mischievous and joyful organ pop.
Joanna Newsom is not for the timid or the closed-minded, the sort who think that the best music is the easily-digested stuff they show on MTV. Because this is the exact opposite -- sparse, melodious little tunes that tripple along in unpredictable ways, with a very atypical voice trilling behind it.
The main instrument here isn't guitar, as it is with most folk music -- it's harp, played with an echoing beauty with the occasional soft sweep of strings or synth behind it, and some piano adding a music-hall flavour. And Newsom can bend the harp to whatever sound she wants -- angular as a country guitar, gentle as a brook, soft, rippling or hesitant.
Newsom's voice can be a little annoying at first, because it's very high-pitched and a bit nasal. But once you get into the "feel" of the album, with its whimsical attitude, her acid-popping fairy voice starts to wear well. Especially when you consider the rambling poetry of her lyrics, with their fantastical imagery ("some dragons who were built to have and hold") and evocative, quirky knack with words.
Joanna Newsom is a brilliant folk-popster, and "Milk Eyed Mender" is a delightful, eccentric little debut album. And she only gets better from here on... right on...
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Beyond Eccentric, 7 Mar 2006
Utterly bonkers. This sounds like Bjork and Kate Bush giving Toyah Wilcox a kicking behind the bike sheds while the Penguin Cafe Orchestra look on. By no means bad but perhaps you should listen to the clips on the Amazon page to help you decide if you should acquire the taste or not. "This side of the blue" and "The book of right on" are the standouts for me but maybe that is because I was familiar with them to start with. Strange but rewarding.
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