Joanna Newsom Review: ‘Ys’

One of the editors at my uni magazine recommended I listen to Joanna Newsom‘s latest album, Ys. Simon, the editor, told me what to expect: five epic, rambling, radically folky songs. Joanna plays the harp, mixing sparse, haunting plucks with breathless and spine-tingling runs. It’s hard to comprehend how anyone can do this at the same time as singing with such raw conviction. It’s very different to just about anything I’ve listened to lately, or maybe ever. Sometimes you get the feeling she’d be very much at home by the fire of some Olde English Lord’s castle – her lyrics are poetically illustrative and her wide-ranging voice literally drips with emotion (haha, got you, that was a metaphor!)

The second song, Monkey and Bear, starts off happy and carefree – Joanna cheerfully explains the wily animals’ escape from their indenture to a cruel farmer. Every time she moves from one free-flowing verse to the next, the mood changes oh-so-subtly. Slowly you start to suspect the monkey, to see the avarice and the lust for cruelty emerge. It’s painful, and at the end of it you’ll be amazed at the intense journey she packs into one song. The other ones follow suit, and there’s barely enough time for your ears to digest what’s thrown at them. The way the song weaves its way through different moods and keys is surprising and almost off-putting at first – when she changes the melody every couple of verses you’re left floating without a catchy hook to draw you back in.

This is part of the attraction and part of the problem I have with her music. I can’t relax and listen to it. It’s so dense and intricate that I have to concentrate for the music to mean anything to me. I can’t just sing along with a chorus because there never seems to be one. Her voice is unusual (in fact, all of her is), she pronounces words strangely and her voices jumps from low to high – sometimes actually cracking with feeling. Unless you listen hard or have looked up the lyrics you’ll miss what she’s saying – and the lyrics go so well with the music that you’d be crazy to be only getting part of “the experience”.

It’s beautiful music, but not in the relaxing way of something like Air. It’s inaccessible but rewarding in a way that I can’t remember ever experiencing. Lie in bed, close your eyes and turn it up loud. Let it fill your imagination with her clever rhymes and evocative poetry, and allow your heartbeat to undulate with its strange timing changes, and then make a judgement. Personally I think it’s worth the effort.

Iron Man thoughts

I saw Iron Man a few days ago, inbetween classes with some friends. I enjoyed it. It has fantastic reviews for a reason – mainly Robert Downey Jr. I’ve never read the comics (or any comics for that matter…), and I knew next to nothing about the Iron Man mythos. I was pleasantly surprised, I actually thought he would be some kind of robot (how embarrassing, I suppose.) Instead he was a funny, smart and above all cool character with very human flaws with which I could empathise.

Downey Jr. makes his larger-than-life personality believable, which is impressive given how fake it could so easily seem having someone as witty and magnetic (iron man? magnets?) as Tony Stark. I usually love origin stories, but Iron Man’s one took over half the movie, or so it felt. There was so much time introducing the character and so little of his doing-cool-shit-in-a-high-powered-suit that I would’ve been disappointed if he wasn’t such an awesome guy anyway. Besides, a sequel is assured and there’ll be plenty of time for his blowing stuff up. Having said that, the action scenes were fantastic – though the villain wasn’t much.

It’s very much worth seeing if you haven’t already – I can’t wait for the next one to come out (2010 I think?)

Spaceship!: A collaborative interactive fiction project

I’m always amazed at both the quantity and quality of interactive fiction that’s produced these days. I rarely play it, but I still read from time to time the blog of Emily Short, a developer and author who’s won lots of awards and is highly respected and all that stuff. Anyway, on her blog she links to British newspaper The Guardian‘s just-launched attempt to create a collaborative IF game.

It’s called Spaceship! and there’s a good article explaining its premise: using a wiki they will allow wannabe (or highly experienced in Emily’s case) developers or writers to contribute to the creation of the game. Rooms, objects, characters, etc. will all have their own pages, and anyone can suggest new things for them to do or say. I think the only story guideline inherent in the game’s inception is: “Your spaceship is broken. Fix it or die.” From what I gather they’ve tried to do something similar before, but it petered out. This is a more coordinated and better planned attempt. If I get spare time I’m definitely going to add some descriptions and suggest something for the plot line. The most important factor in the game’s success, I think, is the people who are involved – and they already seem to be a good bunch.

With so many people being involved hopefully there’ll be a response for everything the player could think to type – I absolutely love games where they consider every possible thing you could try. Obviously there are very practical limits to the amount one person can think of and implement, but with all these people, I’m expecting to be pleasantly surprised. Look at what they’ve got already! Obviously, what makes interactive fiction enjoyable and engaging is not how funny its response to “have sex with crew member” is… but I’ll still play it just for that. Good luck to them.