Last year Joanna Newsom appeared in Inherent Vice, a Paul Thomas Anderson film adapted from a Thomas Pynchon novel. Newsom’s releases are met with the same breathless anticipation reserved for auteurs of their ilk, and rightly so: All three of them have applied a singular vision to many dense, wondrous works that give you a lot to think about and even more to feel. On “Divers”, Newsom’s latest and arguably greatest, the newly married singer/composer/harpist fixates on time’s relentless march and the way true love raises the stakes. As ever, her ideas are presented in meticulously crafted song-suites laden with historical and literary Easter eggs and sung in her unflinchingly distinctive quakes and quivers. The approach could not be farther from the middle of the road, but the sentiment could not be more universal
Track from Joanna Newsom LP/CASS/CD “Divers”, available on October 23rd, 2015 on Drag City Records
The Fat Angel Sings 