WOEBOT

If there's one record that'll be huge this year it's this 'un. It's already got something of a history attached to it without having been released. At first Pitchfork made a cock-up and left their promotional copy up on a easily-reachable part of their server. Lots of people downloaded it. Then some online outlets made the CD available before its official release which is in November. It was then subsequently made "unavailable" but some of the released copies have found their way onto eBay. I found a dealer offering up a copy but then found the sale terminated before the auction had run its course. I approached the dealer and he told me the record company had asked him to remove it from sale. Yikes. I wonder who in the hierarchy gets the job of net snoop? Is it the office boy or is there a new category of employee to deal with these situations?

As is very well-known, the record has arrangements by Van Dyke Parks, is engineered by Steve Albini and produced by Jim O'Rourke. Er, talk about over-egging the production talent. Presumably Jack Nitszche would have been asked to contribute were he alive and they couldn't get Phil Spector cos he was tied up in legal proceedings. They don't ruin it though. Simon and Carl have had a few words to say about its five, lyrical, symphonic suites. My feeling is that it's dead proggy, which is certified in triplicate and then rubber-stamped by the cover. Kind of like an ever-so-slightly more melodic version of peak-period Genesis.....yet acoustic. The problem with that being that it's a bit long on mewl and thin on hooks. The LP even shares a title with a classic Italo Prog LP by Balletto Di Bronzo. Ys was a mythical city in the Douarnenez Bay in Brittany which was built below sea-level and protected by a dam but which was subsequently flooded. There are clearly resonances here with the levee breaking on New Orleans.

I did prefer single tracks off "The Milk-Eyed Mender" and I miss her sounding like a demented eight-year old (alas we get older) but the suites are growing on me like moss and even though it won't necessarily be my record of the year, it stands an excellent chance. In fact although I have reservations about Devandra, the twin-pronged assault of this and "Cripple Crow" put their nexus at the critical fore-front, in front of Dubstep, in front of Grime, in front of Minimal Techno. Who'd have thunk it?

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Visual post-script:

Have a quick butchers at these two earlier Newsom CDs (not mine I hasten to add), "Walnut Whales" and "Yarn and Glue" which she sold at her early shows.....