Joanna Newsom - The Milk-Eyed Mender

Artist: Joanna Newsom
Album: The Milk-Eyed Mender
Genre: Folk
Year: 2004
Country of origin: United States

Tracklisting:

1. Bridges and Balloons
   
2. Sprout and the Bean
   
3. The Book of Right-On
   
4. Sadie
   
5. Inflammatory Writ
   
6. This Side of the Blue
   
7. En Gallop
   
8. Cassiopeia
   
9. Peach, Plum, Pear
   
10. Swansea
    
11. Three Little Babes
    
12. Clam, Crab, Cockle, Cowrie
    

Newsom's wonderfully detailed romanticism ("Your skin is something that I stir into my tea"), homespun wisdom ("Never get so attached to a poem, you forget truth that lacks lyricism"), idiosyncratic flourishes ("See him fashion a cap from a page of Camus"), and insights into the prosaic ("There are some mornings/ When the sky looks like a road") infuse each track with the weightiness of an embroidered travel narrative and a private field-recording.

Showing an appreciation for Appalachian folk and the experimental composer/folksong scholar Ruth Crawford Seeger, her spare arrangements-- harp, Wurlitzer electronic piano, harpsichord, piano, and slide-guitar on two tracks-- unwind like early Homestead oddity, The Supreme Dicks.

Creating avant-garde American music for the back porch, she expands upon tradition without losing authenticity. In this sense, her practice could be linked to Devendra Banhart, a friend and kindred spirit. Both map a pile of eccentricities that tumble together to create something useful, familiar, and nearly sacred.
-Pitchfork

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