I truly believe Joanna Newsom is one of the best - if not the best - lyricists working today. The complexity and beauty of her words come across as well on the page as in song. I'm often rendered speechless by her precise command of imagery and emotion, not to mention her sheer knowledge and skill regarding the English language. Her rhyming capabilities are seriously ridiculous: every line is a twisty labyrinth of intricately assembled - yet natural - sounds. She also uses alliteration, consonance, assonance and other poetic devices to dizzying effect. In my book, the only current songwriter who rivals her in vocabulary and technique is Parenthetical Girls' Zac Pennington (and I'll certainly be talking about him at length sooner or later).

The cause is Ozymandian. The map of Sapokanikan is sanded and beveled, the land lone and leveled by some unrecorded and powerful hand, which plays along the monument and drums upon a plastic bag the brave-men-and-women-so-dear-to-God-and-famous-to-all-of-the-ages rag.

"Sapokanikan" is old news by now to most, but I thought it would be an appropriate subject, since the blog takes its name from another Newsom song. Besides, I still haven't gotten over it. The lyrics are as impressive as ever, immediately apparent in the fact that no other lyricist would ever even conceive of rhyming two words like "Ozymandian" and "Sapokanikan" in the opening lines of a song. The subtleties of meaning are still clicking into place for me; however, in its most basic sense, the song is built upon various references to New York history (Sapokanikan refers to the Native American settlement that once occupied the same space as Greenwich Village). These seemingly random factoids, together, begin to call up grander themes: the ever-changing face of humanity, the impermanence of time, the inescapable reverberations of the past. Even if you don't fully grasp it on an intellectual level, you can feel it on an emotional level.

So we all raise a standard to which the wise and honest soul may repair, to which a hunter, a hundred years from now, may look and despair . . . Go out, await the hunter to decipher the stone and what lies under now; the city is gone.

Here, the lyrical and musical climax is reached simultaneously in a rising swell of lush, woodsy instrumentation. Newsom has been both ridiculed and commended in the past for the "ren faire" atmosphere of her music, and that stylistic approach is apparent in the almost Celtic-sounding finale. (It reminds me of a more straightforward "Kingfisher" mashed up with the piano-led leanings of "Good Intentions Paving Company.") But the song also has a very 1970s folk singer feel to it; I can especially pick up on the influence of Linda Perhacs, who I've been listening to a lot lately, in the whimsical interplay of recorder and celesta in the final moments.


As far as Newsom's vocals go, technically, they've never sounded better. Her high notes are bell-clear and effortlessly elastic, and her tone retains warmth and richness even at her shrillest moments. Although I'll always be most partial to her Ys voice because I think it struck the perfect balance between polished and rough-around-the-edges, there's little denying that her voice can be called "beautiful" now without the need for additional qualifiers. It remains the most idiosyncratic element of her music but is no longer as potentially off-putting.

In sum, "Sapokanikan" encapsulates everything that makes Joanna Newsom's music so endlessly compelling and represents exactly where I hoped she'd be at this point in her career. The possibility that her upcoming album, Divers, may contain ten more tracks of even higher quality leaves me positively aching for its October 23rd release.

Watch the music video for "Sapokanikan," directed by Paul Thomas Anderson, below, and don't forget to pre-order a copy of Divers on iTunes or direct from Drag City!