Ten years on from the release of her rococo masterpiece, Divers, we count down the singer-songwriter-harpist’s most beautiful and devastating tracks
“And in an infinite regress / Tell me, why is the pain of birth / Lighter borne than the pain of death?” Joanna Newsom sings on the elegant, kaleidoscopic title track to 2015’s time-obsessed Divers, its nesting cascades of strings and piano echoing the album’s premise, that life contains death, which contains life, and on and on to ∞ …
The jaunty piano and sweetly rambling verses of Sapokanikan belie the profound depth of history hidden within Divers’ lead single, which contemplates the passing of time in the palimpsest of landscapes and paintings rich with secrets. The song peaks in a sort of ecstatic existential panic: “Look and despair,” Newsom sings once it settles.
Since 2006’s Ys, Newsom’s albums have been so conceptually staggering that her simpler debut can seem juvenile by proxy. But it’s still obvious why anyone who heard 2004’s The Milk-Eyed Mender fell in love. Here, as her rattling harpsichord drives an urgent, anxious account of attraction and rejection, the sweetness of her voice and accompanying spurts of a children’s choir make the hurt sting even more.
