Who is joanna newsom

Newsom is a harpist, lyricist, and musician who began her harp training when she was young, and her music features folksy, almost childlike vocals. Her first break came in the early s when she signed with independent record label She got a big break in the early s when she signed with independent label Drag City Rolling Stone called Newsom "the best-known harpist in American indie music.

She's also known for her lyrical depth—she refers to her most devoted fans as "delvers", as in those who delve deep into every single line of her extended songbook her songs can go as long as 17 minutes and find meaning and logic in every single line. Her fans are devoted and dedicated, with a book called Visions of Joanna Newsom dissecting her lyrics, and a series of in-depth Medium posts. He was already a huge fan of Newsom's music would frequently go to her shows, a source telling Us Weekly that he had "the biggest crush on her" from the start.

The two met through mutual friends—Fred Armisen, Samberg's Saturday Night Live co-star and Newsom's label boss—and dated for five years before they married in Share this page:. Grade It! Around The Web Provided by Taboola. Create a list ». Oscars - Best dressed couple? Best Actress ever. See all related lists ». Do you have a demo reel? Add it to your IMDb page. Find out more at IMDbPro ». How Much Have You Seen?

How much of Joanna Newsom's work have you seen? See more awards ». Known For. It's been interpreted as the weirdest stuff. The only thing in the whole painting that looks slightly constumey is that wreath, and that was specifically because of the flowers and plants in the wreath, and that was a symbolic message I wanted to send with each of those, and that was my choice.

But many of the things in the painting were Benjamin's choice. And we talked and talked about the images we wanted the painting to contain. I think the choice to do a painting instead of a photo was that it afforded so much more opportunity for packing in information, and I thoght it was really appropriate and consistent with the content of the songs, to have a really symbolically rich piece of work on the cover.

That everywhere you look, everything in that painting is supposed to mean something. And it's not really super-important that anyone know what it means, the same as it's not super-important to know what any of these songs are directly referring to, but I think it somehow magnifies the charge and the strength and the worth of the work, to have that meaning.

Like filling every nook and cranny with information - the choice to do the painting like that was made from that perspective. It was definitely not intended to invoke a Renaissance princess, however, I can understand that reading completely in context, particularly because the posture he has me sitting in, you know, the three-quarter facial profile, the window in the corner with the curtain, there's all the conventions of that period in art; but then there's also an airplane trail in the sky But it seemed with any particular style of painting it seems awkward - like I wanted to wear jeans originally, but he was like, It would be so weird for me to paint that.

Not that he's afraid of modernity, but becauue he prefers not to pin his paintings down in time at all. He doesn't have any references to Renaissance but he also doesn't want them to feel like So, there was a certain amount of compromise So I grew my bangs out, and I continued growing them out, and they're at this weird challenge for myself to see if I could live without bangs, because I've had them for so many years. But, the content of the painting and the way it feels was definitely the product of quite a bit of discussion between him and me.

But of course it is also a huge mystery for me, because there's no way to know what emotion is going to be projected or how the painting as a whole is done. He's the only one who had any real idea of that. And I had scenes I wanted to talk aobut - one of which was an idea of decadence, but also one of decay, like a little room with flowers everywhere, and bugs crawling over the flowers, and a skull, and poppies in the hair, which is like an opiated drugged reference, and the wheat which is fertility - there's all these references to physicality and death, and excess.

And all contained in this very airless space - and the posture's extremely stiff, implying a corseted or breathless sense - hot summer air There's also the sickle in the hand which is another reference to wheat but also a reference to a line in the song All this stuff.

There's no way to project it any other way than in a painting, and I had been thinking that for months, and then Ben actually approached me, and said, I was thinking I would like to do a painting, woud you mind sitting for me. And I was like, "actually He spent a damn year on the thing. R: Astral Weeks Yours works in a similar way Could you talk about the process of constructing the whole pieces?

J: Let's see. As far as the construction of the long song goes from an instrumental perspective, I'd say that that was much more natural for me than the process of writing the lyrics. For years that has been the way that I wrote music, before I even sang.

Certainly when I was in school attempting to be a composer, those were the forms it was almost taken for granted I would write within. And obviously no vocals It goes back to the decadence of allowing myself to luxuriate in this longer song form - it very much felt like a return to a way of writing that was really familiar and natural for me, and I have attenuated and reined in, and disciplned quite a bit when I decided to start singing with my music.

And that's a choice I still belive in, and think in future that's a good idea to uphold; the desire to be economical - I don't think it's a good idea to promote myself to range out on these insanely long songs. That's because it made sense very early on for this record, and the subject matter and the things that I was thinking about and feeling and wanting to write about for this record demanded a longer song form, and it seemed like it would be incredibly crass and vulgar to sit down and write a conventional song form, it would be clumsy to do that Because I had set myself to the task of writing these long songs and loved doing it, it was so fun and so natural, and so wonderful to think about And it probably took me, just the writing of that stuff, took me about five months.

I wasn't really keeping track. And I think the spontaneity that somehow manages to get preserved in the record, I think a lot of that had to do with the fact that I recorded the harp and vocal parts prior to a single note of the arrangements being written. Because Van Dyke wanted it that way - he had noticed that I vary my performances slightly, but often, and he wanted to write his arrangements to my final take rather than a straight harp take because any tiny change in the performance would completely inform every nuance of his arrangements.

Which was very reasonable to me; I was a tiny bit disappointed because I was excited about standing in the middle of a full orchestra and making eye contact with people But it turned out to be the best thing that could possibly have happened to that record, because I really hate to use the word innocence, because usually I don't relate to it at all in my music.

But in this context it's slightly appropriate because I recorded these songs and harp parts in a climate in which I had no idea what was to come. And they were just the sogns, they were really simple, there wasn't a lot of formality, I wasn't burdened or encumbered by the knowledge of this huge orchestera and what it was going to be doing at each turn of phrase, so I was able to do things without too much I think it would have been very different if I'd recorded with the orchestra or later on, when their parts had been written.

I think there would have been much more formality, more stiffness. And much less emotional presence, because I was in this small room with Steve Albini and nobody else, and I was playing the songs exactly as they are, and it was a pretty intense time, and I had it candlelit, in the dark with just candles and conjuring up these pretty insane moments that I had been experiencing Basically I felt like I was in an environment where I was able to sing the songs the way they were when I wrote them.

Which isn't always the easiest thing when recording. Sometimes I can do that when I'm performing; there's something about the heightened energy of performing focuses me and brings me back to the place I was in when I wrote those songs, but I've never been able to record very easily without changing the energy of the songs, and there's something about the way Steve recorded me and the environment in which it was done, there was a sense of closeness and spontaneity, and I felt extremely emotionally on edge, and I went through these vocal takes, I was just like wrecked afterwards because it was such an emotional experience.

But it was really good, that I was able to do that, because then we went into about five or six months of working on the arrangements. And I got so much more technical in my brain during that process, and I think it would have been much more cumbersome, if I had tried to record all the harp parts in that mindset.

And it was really hard work - I was using a different part of my brain, so I was glad to have gotten that stuff out of the way.

J: Hmm, no, I don't think that's accurate - I think I learned a lot, but It was amazing working with him. This is going to sound incredibly arrogant, but I know my music really really well. It's one of the very few things on this planet that I know really well, is my own music. I'm not saying I know music in general really well, but my own. But I learned a lot from him about other stuff! I learned a lot about arrangements from him, I learned a lot about what he does.

And Iearned about grace and being rad, cos he's really rad! And he's an incredible human being And they were incredible. But they started out pretty far from what I needed them to be for this record.

The exception was "Monkey And Bear" - pretty soon after he wrote that arangement, we were able to get it to a point where it was exactly what I wanted. But for the other pieces, it took months of editing and drafting, and him sending me these ararngements and me coming up with a huge list of notes about what I wanted to have changed, and sending it back, and him instituting those revisions, and them sending it again And these arrangements went through geneartion after geneartion and he was just incredibly graceful and tireless about the whole process.

As I said, the producing was incredible gorgeous. Because I lack the technical abilities that he has, in terms of what I want If I had the technical language to describe what I wanted exactly, then I would also have the technical ability to score these arrangements myself. So, like, I didn't, I couldn't be as technical as I wanted to. So there were a lot of times when he was responding to a prompt that I had given to him in a very non-technical form, like, I want this to feel like this, or I wanted to evoke this particular image, or I wanted to shift from this mood to this mood at this particular point, and I want the instruments that are involved to switch from this group of strings to the woodwinds It left so much room for him to write exactly what he needed to write, and it took a long time for us to bring it to a point where we both felt it was what it should be.

But his way of being throughout this whole proces has been patient and fearles and really certain that we were going to get there. That we would reach a point where people would feel good about the arrangements. What was necessary in the end was for me to come to LA for a few weeks just so I could comb through them bar by bar, because there was such a huge volume of notes and musical gestures, stacked on top of each other, that I needed to be able to hear it while looking at the written score and to be able to point out this note or that note It's pretty incredible that he allowed me to do that - and invited me to do that - it was his idea.

Come to LA, and like comb through, nitpick his work. There was a real abandon. A complete emerging… Or immersing myself in it. I was just completely occupied with the record in a different and new way. It sounds intense. Newsom even avoided listening to all other music in case it influenced hers.

Not bad for an acting debut. Certainly not on camera. This is not a moment in my life where I want to start hustling. Should Newsom ever stop making music, she figures that she might make a more dramatic shift. Look out for that! Newsom is messing around, although maybe not. Does she buy the pieces she spots? Literally, not an exaggeration. Later she discovered that the same rug is in the permanent collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

We have spent too long discussing the allure of French and Italian mid-century furniture and how True Detective lost its way. Newsom needs to get going — she has to be in Paris tonight. No wonder, I say, it takes her five years to make a record.