Artist: Joanna Newsom
Album: Divers
Joanna Newsom’s fourth studio album titled Divers, explores the depths and intricacies of memory and emotion. With each song delicately interwoven with soulful vocals and poignant plucks of Newsom’s harp, the album is a feast of creativity and uniqueness for any new listener. With songs like “Leaving the City,” “Waltz of the 101st Lightborne,” and “You Will Not Take My Heart Alive,” the album creates a shifting landscape that aches to remind us of love and loss. In the title track of the album, Newsom sings, “And in an infinite capsize: Like a bull tearing down the coast, double hulls bearing double masts—I don’t know if you loved me most, but you loved me last.” In addition to her own harp playing, members of the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra stood in to play everything from the medieval clavichord, to the marxophone. Throughout the album, Newsom uses an assortment of unique sounds and existentialist lyrics to embed and create a genuinely cohesive and meaningful album for the listener.