I think it's natural to get upset when a band you love during their relative anonymity becomes wildly popular. Zack Braff didn't make the Shins' music any worse, and they were already extremely popular, but he contaminated them by feeding them to the masses. I know it's immature, but I want to keep artists I love to myself. Or at least to people that I respect. When you see the Shins listed next to Audioslave on MySpace profiles, it's hard to only hear the music.
There's a chance that I'll get to keep Joanna Newsom, although she's already quite popular and her new brilliant album, Ys, is only going to make her more-so. Her voice, which is inexplicably called annoying, yelping, screeching and other expletives in any mention of her work, will assure me that not everyone will embrace her. Thus, I can continue to stand on high and look down on the masses who don't understand what I see as a singular, mesmerizing voice that may be alien, but is clearly part of a more advanced species than you or I.
The first time I heard the The Milk-Eyed Mender, "Peach, Plum, Pear" startled me. I stopped progressing on the album and listened to the song again. There aren't many songs out there capable of giving me chills, but this one did the first 100 times I heard it.
The rest of the album is great, but this song stands out for so many reasons. A new instrument, an electric harp, instructs you to listen. It sounds like a song from the future, from an instrument I've never heard and a voice I could never imagine. And then the voice magnifies itself at certain points, the song ascending to terrifying new heights.
It's at these points where the song becomes something I'll never get over. Doubletracking vocals is nice, but Newsom quadruple (or more) tracks to make the climax that much more intense.
For many people that annoying, yelping voice X 4 will be only that more unbearable. For me, it's transcendent.
And I am blue, I am blue and unwell.
Joanna Newsom - Peach, Plum, Pear
Final Fantasy - Peach, Plum, Pear
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1 comment:
i agree, its hard to see music you like be swallowed up by the masses, i guess you just hope if that happens, the artist can survive and still produce great music, and ys is incredible, if people dont get it that is their misfortune
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