On Harps and Kalimbas

Arguably, my two most listened to albums of the past few years would have to be Joanna Newsom's The Milk Eyed Mender and Smog's A River Ain't Too Much Too Love. I'm not sure what it is about these albums exactly, but both share the quality of refusing to be background music. In Newsom's case, it's partially "the voice" that refuses to be ignored. But it's more than that. As with Smog, the lyrics exel beyond the kind of college creative writing level stuff that usually passes for good in the world of indie rock. Critics always point to the mythical creatures and fantasy themes in Newsom's music, but tend to ignore the complex rhythms in her lyrics and they way that the songs are ultimately more about playing with language than they are about evoking some kind of Tolkein-ish fantasy world (which they aren't really doing at all).

The live versions of the new songs floating around the internets seem to indicate that the next album is continuing in a similar trajectory towards greatness as The Milk Eyed Mender did. And, as an added bonus, Zoilus has reported that Van Dyke Parks is going to be doing the arrangements on the recording of the next album, which is awesomely good news. You can find a bunch of these new songs at the excellent fansite, Milky Moon, where I found this one.

Joanna Newsom - Emily

Clocking in at over nine minutes, this song is indicative of the increasingly epic proportions that Newsom's songs seem to be taking. But rather than stretching the song thin in instrumental wankery and long solos, it's packed so densely with lyrical imagery that it could easily be spliced into three or four separate (epic) songs. Even after listening to it a dozen times over the past few weeks, I still keep finding new bits of genius scattered throughout.

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Laura Barrett is a Torontonian who's also making some great music. Like Joanna Newsom, Barrett uses some unusual instrumentation for a singer/songwriter, playing solo-kalimba instead of the harp, while also sharing with Newsome a healthy tendency towards absurd and often silly lyrics. (Although Barrett perhaps exels in the silliness department with her great interpretation of Weird Al Yankovich's "Smell's Like Nirvana".)

Laura Barrett - Deception Island Optimists Club

Most of all, though, Barrett is especially good at packing seemingly simple songs full of interesting melody and tempo changes, aided of course by the unusual music-box-like percussive quality of the Kalimaba. I especially like this one.

You can only buy Barrett's hand stitched EP Earth Sciences by emailing her directly. You can find her contact info and some other songs here.