Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth, and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisco-based indie band The Pleased. After recording and self-releasing two EPs in 2002, Newsom was signed to the independent label Drag City.

Joanna Newsom是一个有着无限精神头的女生，特点就是年轻并且涉猎广，出生于1982年的她，出身于音乐世家，是Terry Riley的邻居，从小学习钢琴，掌握一手精湛的凯尔特竖琴，思维跳脱不局限，朋克的诗意、民谣的纯真、爵士的曼妙都是她心有灵犀的素材，并影响着她的创作动机，在民谣的肌理之上将异域民歌与先锋创作的手法融于一炉，是The Pleased、Deerhoof等多支同族Indie乐队的键盘手/竖琴手，《The Milk-Eyed Mender》是其第一张Solo唱片，展现了一副儿童般未经修饰的嗓音，浅吟低唱之处有种青葱本真的美感，古怪而甜蜜，轻轻撩动的琴弦也契合着其一尘不染的整体调调，Will Oldham和Cat Power都对其赞赏有嘉。

Good heavens-five years go by-what can one do? Dive, listener, knowing that diversions aplenty await: a wheeling circuit of sci-fi sea-shanties and cavalier ballads; a family of polysemic song-sets; a paranomasaic Liederkreis of harmonic sympathies and knotted hierarchies; a fanfare of brazen puns and martial lullabies, blazing in sorrow and horseplay and love, in turns symphonic and spare, joined by Mellotrons and Marxophones and Moogs, clavichords and celestas-and of course the harp, thrumming its threnodies of circadian invasions and avian irruptions and strange loops of Shepard-toned resonant-frequencies and something called goddamned Simulacreage…
The music of Divers is a wonder of considered arrangements, immaculately sequenced for telescoped brevity. The music speeds with dissociative dread over montaged cityscapes; it hoofs with delight among the collaged quotations and sepia-toned codices of Popular Song; it ambles its carefree citational course through the public domain and down into the dustier corners of municipal parks, to lionize infamous airmen and anonymous Dutch Masters, to mourn pearl divers and Poorwills, and to elegize the ineluctable tragedy of relativity…
At the center of the mythos and the maelstrom is the woman. Divers reminds us that Newsom is a melodist, above all-an acolyte of melody and beauty in form, a crackerjack of emotional truth conveyed with undiluted immediacy. Here, at the aortic confluence of countless strings and wires, winking beneath the lacquered layers of instrumental nacre, biding quietly between the ranges of rhapsodic arrangement-including those by Nico Muhly, Ryan Francesconi, Dave Longstreth, and Newsom herself-there lies an intimacy seldom achieved, and simply heard. Divers dives forth with a pure love and respect for the traditions and mysteries of man, such that we can feel the surge of life itself passing over our bones as we hear the songs and sounds, the players and the arrangements; as basic maths are reviewed to uncover heights of joy and sorrow, all traced in triumphal arches and supernumerary rainbows through eternal amber, gleaming in analog entrapment-with that VOICE riding high atop-recorded with snow-bright, high-noon-verity by Steve Albini and Noah Georgeson, mixed in phantasmagoric, deep-sea-saturation by Noah and Joanna, and loosed, FINALLY, by Drag City Records.
We have reached Peak Newsom. Divers is coming, to incline into your many and varied lifelines, for now and then and the rest of the moments that will always return in your lifetimes again.

★Mojo與Uncut專業音樂雜誌攜手獻上五顆星滿分的另類民謠大作★
★英美媒體爭相報導，所有樂評2010年終榜上的最佳專輯之一★
現年29歲，在加州內華達長大的Joanna Newsom，從小就受到熱愛音樂的雙親陶冶，五歲開始學習豎琴與鋼琴。曾短暫在大學學習作曲的她，如同John Mayer為了追求個人音樂創作而輟學，在二十歲時就錄製了兩張獨立EP，受到化名Bonnie Prince Billy的歌手Will Oldham的注意，進而被獨立廠牌Drag City簽下。Joanna Newsom連續兩張專輯《The Milk-Eyed Mender》、《Ys》都以另類民謠為主要風格，充滿奇想的旋律及意象吸引了不少樂迷跟隨。第三張專輯《Have One on Me》大手筆做成3CD套裝，由長期合作夥伴Jim O’Rourke與Noah Georgeson製作，首週發行就打進Billboard#75，特殊的風格也讓樂評讚譽為Joni Mitchell、Ricke Lee Jones、Kate Bush的接班人。

Recorded in California during a break in the Ys North American tour of 2006, "Joanna Newsom and the Ys Street Band" is a tart and sweet EP containing one new song and two of Joanna's classics (one from "The Milk-Eyed Mender" and one from "Ys." The pagan style of Joanna's live band is key to the sound of the record, stamping their dusty boot prints on each of the three songs. 24 minutes, all told.

Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth, and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisco-based indie band The Pleased. After recording and self-releasing two EPs in 2002, Newsom was signed to the independent label Drag City.

Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth, and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisco-based indie band The Pleased. After recording and self-releasing two EPs in 2002, Newsom was signed to the independent label Drag City.

Born and raised in Northern California, Newsom was classically trained on the harp in her youth, and began her musical career as a keyboardist in the San Francisco-based indie band The Pleased. After recording and self-releasing two EPs in 2002, Newsom was signed to the independent label Drag City.