Credit: drag city

Label: Drag City
Release: 13th November

Sometimes it is difficult to figure out music that has no relevance to how we breathlessly consume and carouse, strive and stumble our way through our Twenty-first Century lives.

Music that exists outside the realms of love, loss, rock ‘n roll and even a kind of mundanity, seems alien.

But here is American songstress Joanna Newsom spinning folklore on her new album Ys (pronounced eees) and demanding our attention.

Newsom has moved away from the eccentric non-sense that inspired her critically-acclaimed 2004 debut The Milk-Eyed Mender.

The cracked, childlike vocals - love them or loathe them - are rendered more sophisticated and the stripped down bedroom accompaniment is replaced by lush string arrangements courtesy of Van Dyke Parks.

Newsom, painted as a fantastical, foreboding princess of nature on the sleeve, has assumed the role of a storyteller.

Her narrative is set out in just five songs – Emily, Monkey & Bear, Sawdust & Diamonds, Only Skin – the longest at almost 16 minutes – and Cosmia.

Newsom’s supple voice and the constant movement of her lead instrument, the harp, shape Ys and the songs seem to melt and slide into one another.

It it easy to let the mind wander when taking in Newsom’s new work as it demands careful listening.

In fact, to fully appreciate her blend of poetry and music, you may have to break one of The Music Fan’s cardinal rules and read the lyrics as you play the album.

Honestly, it is so much better. I read Monkey & Bear as a straight-up poem without the music and was rewarded with a poignant tale of a dancing bear who finds no escape in freedom – and I bet there was a metaphor somewhere in there too.

Newsom’s songs, long and lush as they are, do lack an immediate connection, but their saving grace is that there is something arresting and uplifting about them too.

In a way Ys is like watching a spectacular landscape unfold outside the car window, difficult to take in but awe-inspiring, existing in wonder and untainted by the modern world which crawls around it.