Ys? More like ... CrappY!
For some reason there seems to be quite a lot of wank around harp playing indie artist Joanna Newsom. I thought this one warranted posting.

So Joanna Newsom released a new album this year entitled Ys. It is extremely ambitious and one would not be out of line to call it difficult. However despite that it seemed to be getting an endless stream of positive reviews.

Except from Rolling Stone.

They summed up the album with;
"Newsom is a classically trained harpist and singer who made a very good 2004 record, but this EP is hard to stomach: Five tracks, four of them more than nine minutes and one ("Only Skin") sixteen-plus, with meandering strings-and-things accompaniment and indulgent vocal quirks that make Bjork sound like Kelly Clarkson."

Nothing really wrong with that. Not everyone needs to like everything. However Rolling Stone just couldn't stand that they weren't allowed to sit at the cool kids table with everyone who likes that stupid Joanna Newsom and her crummy harp album.

Thus they write a new article just to say, HEY! JOANNA (AND EVERYONE WHO LIKES HER) SUX!*

The bolding and underlining is mine.

"In the history of rock music few artists have benefited as much from the hipster audience’s fear of seeming stupid than Joanna Newsom. This much fawned over woodland nymph/harpist — with her track “Emily” off this year’s Ys (pronounced “ees” … what you didn’t know that?) has secured the Number 9 spot on what is an otherwise quite well-conceived list of the year’s 100 best tracks courtesy of indie zeitgeist definers Pitchfork.

We are taking this moment to address an issue that has been plaguing us ever since this album came out, namely, that it sucks. We are particularly strongly reminded of its suckage in this moment, when we see “Emily” in the top-ten company of genuinely awesome tracks by Clipse, Hot Chip, and TV On the Radio.

Most reviews of Newsom’s new album “Ys” follows the same thesis: Her music is dense, lacks melody, tonality, humor and listenability, is somewhat off-putting and often cloyingly pretentious, but if you work hard enough you will feel her genius radiate through you and then you will know you are cool. This woman makes the very precious (but awesome) Regina Spektor — with her quirky ingenue vibe and almost obnoxious doe-eyed coffee house sincerity — seem like AC fucking DC.

Having to read about Newsom (who makes free lyrical use of the word “thee”) being “devoid of artifice” on a list that could have been truly edgy and subversive as well as accurate, is really annoying. Especially when you consider that Pitchfork (much to many of their readers’ dismay) selected Timberlake/T.I. collaboration “My Love” as their Number 1 song of the year. Even we wouldn’t go that far, but they did, and kudos to them. Must they overcompensate by giving eager fanboy props to the preening harpist?"

Comments on the whole seem to be attacking Rolling Stone for such a ridiculous article, but there some "OMG HOW DARE YOU JUDGE THE GREATNESS OF JOANNA!" sentiment mixed in there, along with "right on, she does suck!"

*This is the part that really gets me. I can't be sure, but if the commenters on RS are to be believed, the article when first published was actually called "Joanna Sux" and RS changed the title to something less uh, idiotic. If that's not wanky, I don't know what is. I mean, I wasn't aware internet flame war starters were allowed to write for huge music magazines but you learn something new all the time!