Vinyl Diaries II: Joanna Newsom

The meadowlark and the chim-choo-ree and the sparrow
Set to the sky in a flying spree, for the sport of the pharaoh
A little while later the Pharisees dragged a comb through the meadow
Do you remember what they called up to you and me, in our window?

Harp lightly plucked, that voice.

Then the strings...

There is a rusty light on the pines tonight
Sun pouring wine, lord, or marrow
Down into the bones of the birches
And the spires of the churches
Jutting out from the shadows
The yoke, and the axe, and the old smokestacks and the bale and the barrow
And everything sloped like it was dragged from a rope
In the mouth of the south below

How to follow up a debut both scorned and adored, critiqued and criticised, with almost exactly the same phrases - some fawningly intended while some used utterly pejoratively?

By diving in, embracing the elements that were teasingly hinted at in The Milk Eyed Mender and creating a work of sheer majesty and breathtaking scope.

'Ambitious' is almost a dirty word in some music circles, and such circles would find Ys a work of utter indulgence. But too much of music today fails to truly push any kind of envelope, the middle of the road being far safer than the road less travelled.

Newsom, here, is not even traversing such a road - she's awander in forbidden forests, tasting of fruits that would emperil those of lesser talents and allowing them to influence, but never losing sight of her journey.

You came and lay a cold compress upon the mess I'm in

A 12-minute paean to sisterhood is not how you're supposed to begin your 'difficult' second album, nor to segue, then, into a picaresque tale of a monkey and dancing bear escaping from their servitude, only to develop a relationship with similar subservience.

The musical vision is quite astonishing, working to match the flightiness and surprise of the lyrical twisting and soaring, swarms of sparrows in a twittering spin.

While these works set sail to the winds, Sawdust And Diamonds anchors the album firmly in gentler waters.

I wasn't born of a whistle or milked from a thistle at twilight

Just voice and harp, it harks back to Mender's more intimate moments, but with a broader vision and palette of pastels that are more complex than ever - broader brushstrokes that embrace, even with the unearthly yips and squeals that many find too affected to get past. Their loss.

There is nowhere to go, save up
Up where the light, undiluted, is weaving in a drunk dream
At the sight of my baby, out back:
Back on the patio watching the bats bring night in
- while, elsewhere, estuaries of wax-white
Wend, endlessly, towards seashores unmapped

Only Skin warmly winds its way into your psyche, soaring in Kate Bush moments but bringing it back to a more earthed and earthy place. Its 17 minutes pass by in a whirr of beached whales, shelled snails and window-wounded birds being returned to the sky from treehouses.

When you ate I saw your eyelashes
Saw them shake like wind on rushes
In the corn field when she called me
Moths surround me, thought they'd drown me

The album closes with Cosmia, containing its most vocally ambitious, or abrasive if you prefer, moments. While the shortest of the works (a 'mere' seven minutes), it's also the most urgent. The harp is plucked with more of a sense of danger lurking, the orchestration is more unsettled, less assured of its relationship with flow of the piece, but turns out for the mini-climaxes punctuating the track.

And I miss your precious heart
And miss, and miss, and miss
And miss, and miss, and miss, and miss, and miss your heart
But release your precious heart
To its feast, for precious hearts

Almost screeched, in Newsom's unmistakable old lady/little girl delivery, it's a potent promise that her emotional journey, as with her musical and lyrical, has been as exhausting and stimulating as has the listener's. It finishes fairly abruptly for such an epic undertaking, but that simply leaves us aching for more.