Joanna Newsom

I love her and her music. But what's her type?



From an old Pitchfork interview:

Joanna Newsom is quite the talker. Her interview answers are as extensive and eloquent as the lyrics on her new album, Ys. She speaks in complete sentences with tacit semicolons and correctly nested subordinate clauses. She discusses her music-- why the songs are so long, how Van Dyke Parks and an orchestra became involved, and how she handles replicating the complex instrumentation live-- with precision, intensity, and a confidence that never shades into arrogance.

But there are some things about Newsom that you won't get from this text, like how she tends to whisper "yeah" as you speak if you're saying something she agrees with, and that-- despite how she's frequently presented in the press-- Newsom is no bright plastic oddity. Her 2004 debut, The Milk-Eyed Mender, marked the young harpist as a drastically polarizing artist-- some promptly swooned at her otherworldly presence; many others balked at her bracing voice and penchant for exalted language. Critics implied that Newsom's music was essentially affected and insincere, and the gravity of the charge was compounded by the fact that her sincerity was exactly what the swooning set adored in her.

Newsom returned this year with Ys, an album that will do nothing to allay these criticisms. In an indie culture that rewards well-turned mediocrity and can be suspicious of ambition, the record's long compositions, ornate orchestral arrangements, and antique lyrics are guaranteed to be dismissed as pretentious by many. And they are-- symbolically dense and anachronistically stylized, Newsom's songs expect a lot from the listener. But whether or not the music is pretentious is beside the point. The debate between Newsom admirers and detractors seems to revolve around one question-- does she mean it, or is she selling us snake-oil? I don't claim to have gotten to the bottom of Joanna Newsom in a 45-minute conversation, but she left me with the impression of being an uncommonly graceful and articulate person, not a collection of tics and fancies; a person who, regardless of what she's doing, always means it.

So, I'm thinking INFJ but I may be biased.