When I was first introduced to Joanna Newsom in 2007, I didn’t quite “get it” although I fully appreciated the depth of her lyrics. Then, one day I put Ys on for “background” music while I painted and it finally clicked. I noticed I was painting more freely without thinking, everything just flowed more smoothly. A little bit after that, I had to put my brush down and lay on the floor to start the album over, to listen to the entire thing, soaking it all in. What an absolute gift. I’ve been a super fan ever since that autumn evening and eagerly anticipate anything and everything she does!
"I looked every day for you, Maggie until I heard they found a whore with the golden hair on the shores of the Lake Adair." Man, this song always makes me tear up even though it's insane. Joanna has such a wonderful lyricism that perfectly hits with the way she emotes her words vocally. "Let me join in that line and let me toil in that mine, let me find what is hiding there. Let me dig where I durst and let me drink when I thirst. Let me breathe that peril air. And breathe for my canary. Let me breathe for my canary." She's absolutely American storytelling treasure.
so enchanted by “just a little one Maggie, just a little one” because it goes out to show how, despite all of the suffering Maggie might’ve went through, her death was really ‘for the kindness that she had shown’. Joanna, the songwriter that you are!
Yeah, that's the reading I like. My evil brain tried to make it a sign that she was maybe a little slow or something. But if it's just her sweetness, I like that.
I love the rhythm of the "canary, canary, canary" I have no idea how she came up with this! It's so inventive and just perfect. So in love with this song. It's one of my favourites already.
(Work-in-progress transcription of the lyrics, a collaborative effort by many fans! There are still some gaps, and probably many errors.) June of ’78. Who are you, so arrayed, on the banks of the Lake Adair? Pale lacuna agape--- and like the moon in the lake, you are not there. My poor canary. At uncertain behest, Maggie'd blown to the west in a shimmering dust of gold. With her pale yellow hair, they would call her ‘Canary’. And I loved my Maggie so. And that is all you need to know. Women here ain’t ever glad --- not even Emma Nevada, coming back to share her wedding cake! Women here ain’t ever free (and Emma never left!); we never leave; we never last, we never ask, we never stake a claim, or complain, or take. Not til I made a play for a parcel that lay on the Amador county line. Had a notion that I’d find employ by-and-by at the Lonesome Willow Mine, but they don’t enlist my kind. In the meantime--- set to prospecting where I was able, and laying my Maggie a table. And when it was warm, we would pan; when it stormed, play vingt-et-un. And when it was cold, they’d come sniffing, with gold in their hands. On and on and again, On and on and again, You do what you can. Take an eighth of an ounce in allowance for my dance -- only a dance. You feel alone and abandoned, cast aside -- you know the pastor tried in vain to ask her hand. Even him!- well, everybody did. And I had a plan, but I had to sign away my mine, and the deed left us free to scrape, and bleed, and go to seed, and never marry, not canary, canary, canary, canary, canary, canary, canary, canary, canary, canary... In the spring of that year, when the tinker was here, gals would hire him to mend their tin. I heard ‘em swarm from afar, like a storm in a jar, like a choir of cherubim, singing hymn, hymn, hymns--- ---whispering, Maggie had gone. Must’ve skipped with someone! Sounded wrong, though it did seem fair. April turned into May, and I looked every day for you, Maggie, til I heard they found a whore with the golden hair on the shores of the Lake Adair. On the sluice she was spread, loose, and languid, and dead, from the kindness that she had shown. Still she told me her tale, lifting veil after veil to expose a grin of bone. My yellow rose in the low wind, blown. And though I longed to believe, as I muddied my sleeve, and I studied the weakened hem(?), and I longed to revive, she was never alive, but by the grace, and the whim, and the will, and the yen, and the wickedness of men. But what to do then? I hauled myself up from the shore, and I called at the door of the foreman. I told him and he laughed! So alas, there was savagery then: left a hole in his heart you could roll a cabbage in! (A cabbage?!) (Oh no, no! Just a little one, Maggie! Just a little one!) On and on and again, til they saw what I am. And I am never done. I am never done. Went inside, found the light, got a paper and a pen. Where to begin? You sue for the rights, route for the strike, through the alluvium to where it leads, For puddling(?) ___ to the end, the lode, the deed(?) a noose on a live oak tree bent over the saloon tent and meant for me and Maggie! And though it wasn’t him, ---- it couldn't've have been him! --- or anyone who had done what I know so many men intended when they came and went. So arrogant, arrogant, arrogant, arrogant, arrogant, arrogant, arrogant, arrogant, arrogant, arrogant... Held a cloth to my hands, taking stock of my plans. Well, there was something yet to make right. I took his old buggy whip and I lowered a skip in the glow of the sodium lights, with a load of dynamite. Maggie said, “I am here.”, and with a touch on the ear: “After thirty years down in the mines, help me lead out the mules. Help me free the poor fools. Let them see for the very first time they were blind, blind, blind.” Then we rode for the rectory, where, genuflecting, she opened her neck like a scrim. I saw the father appear; heard her sob in my ear like a mob of cherubim howling, “Him! Him! It was him!" It was him. So I threw a charge down the shaft in a cart with the pastor who spat and evangelized. He was the last and the worst. Canary always goes first to sing where the waters rise. Hear her sing. (Go on now, Maggie!) "On and on, on and on, on and on and again And on and on On and on and again! On and on and again! Then a knock on the wall and they fall in, and a knock and they all fall in, and down and in, and down and in, and we pass away. But we pass it on like a baton, man to man, and so they return. Pull the pumps, fill the sumps, but I'll tell you something they will never learn. They will never learn that even if the churn drill, and the stamp mill, and the Pelton wheel, and the smelting furnace, all are burning, overturning, earning, she will never breathe the air again, air again, air again, air again, air again, air again, air again, air again, air again, air again, air again, air again... Like the screech of a flare, or like they’re reaching for air beneath the smothering eiderdown, veins of gold still outstretch in a silent arrest for miles and miles around, undefiled underground. Let me join in that line, and let me toil in that mine. Let me find what is hiding there. Let me dig where I durst. Let me drink when I thirst, and let me breathe the peril air [?], and breathe for my canary, and breathe. Let me breathe. Let me breathe for my canary. Breathe for my canary, canary, canary. Breathe for my--- (canary always falls first!) Breathe for my canary, canary, canary, canary. [repeated 2x]
I listen to this from time to time, and every time I just keep getting more floored and speechless. I can't even imagine, this song being completed with the 15 min version. Could very easily be her best. A masterpiece among masterpieces. Truly a one of a kind musician.
Okay, I've picked my favorite part - it's when she repeats "canary" only three times in the coda (that's what I call the faster bit at the end) instead of six or nine or whatever. It kills.
There's music and there's poetry. There's artistry and imagination, and so many other things that comprise culture, society and civilization. There are all of these very different, but related elements, stretching out over time and topography. The combination of which, when viewed, cherished, and iterated upon by us, all those that came before us, and all those that will live on after us, is unified through the movement of heavenly bodies and myriad forces unseen, to form what is the Human Experience. Thousands of years ago. This very moment. Next year. Eons from now. Somehow, though, through an extraordinary set of gifts and an unrivaled amount of dedication to expression and craft, Joanna Newsom does this. This thing she does. These Songs she weaves. These stories she tells. These perceptions she alone creates. No one else can do this. No one else ever will. The average human can't even comprehend, truly, what she constructs and so effortlessly displays. Imagination personified. Civilization embodied. A voice. A memory. A moment. You are blessed to be here now to receive her gift. You are part of this, traveler.
This is what an example of properly styled modern singing sounds like. Millions of modern singers style their sound in ways that are unattractive, while an extreme few get it right. On a side note, this sounds like a return to form for Newsom, which is welcome after the explorative tone of her last album.
Yeah she does sound great, here. I'm listening, trying to figure out which album this song would sound at home on, and I can't really place it. I actually think it sounds more like Divers than any of her others, if I had to choose. Maybe if she sang it to the harp it'd be more Ys, but on the piano anyways, I'd say Divers.
@@lukewilliam3601 I listened on my phone at work and could not hear it too well, but upon first listen it reminded me of Have One On Me which is a great sign. Don't get me wrong, I love Divers too. I want to wait for the album release to dive in. I enjoy seeing these videos , but i feel alot of the art of a song is recording it perfectly. Listening to a song like this on RU-vid feels akin to watching a cam copy of an academy award winning fillm. A part of me is nostalgic for Have One On Me. It was the first of her albums that I bought on launch, having not gotten into her at the beggining. I was twenty eight years old approximately. By the time I got Divers at release I was at least thirty five if I remember correctly. It was a far different time in my life, and also music had changed alot during that time. I often compare the two albums in my mind. As clean and refined as Divers is, Have One On Me feels like a deeper cut.
@@guyvandermire4146 100%. I follow a similar timeline actually with her albums. I'll take Have One on Me over Divers all day, same as you, although both are excellent. I prefer the subject matter of Have One, as yes, it cut so deep emotionally.
@@lukewilliam3601 I am curious what other modern folk artists you would consider to be on par with Newsom as being considered to be "god tier post emo folk music". For me, I would say the early stuff by Beirut, all of Fleet Foxes stuff, and to an extent, some of the stuff by Andrew Bird, Vampire Weekend and Animal Collective. Anything beyond that would be treading into post emo indie rock turf, which is a whole other ball game. That is my take on it.
@@guyvandermire4146 I'm going to be honest. I like some of that stuff, too. But the only artist I think is in Joanna's universe is Leonard Cohen. I know it's a weird comparison, but they both stand alone in their ability to dig so incredibly deep emotionally and lyrically. There's no one quite like Cohen, and there is no one like Joanna, but they're both so thoughtful and incitful, and honest in their music.
re: the cabbage stuff. Is Maggie upset by the size of the hole? Is that why she says “a cabbage?” with such enormous fear and trembling? And is she then actually calmed by his response - just a little one? It’s an odd moment and I wanna understand it better.
I’m curious about this too. I interpret it pretty much the same way as you though: Maggie being shocked or upset by the narrator’s description of the foreman’s death in such brutal detail.
@@williamroby3011 Btw, I think it's almost certain the narrator is a woman. She uses "we" in the stanza that has "women here ain't ever glad"/"women here ain't ever free", and then later "they don't enlist my kind" seems like it could be another hint. I think she and Maggie are lovers, and may both be prostitutes ("and when it was cold, they'd come sniffin', with gold in their hands" = men coming to pay for sex, and of course Maggie is the "whore with the golden hair"). Further evidence is that the two live together but "never marry", and when Maggie disappears the narrator thinks it sounds "wrong" but seemed "fair" that Maggie might have left with someone, as if admitting to herself that Maggie would be justified in abandoning their marginalized lifestyle for a better life. The narrator also says Maggie "was never alive, but by the grace, and the whim, and the will, and the yen, and the wickedness of men" which seems like another allusion to Maggie's life of prostitution to men, and would be weird if the narrator was a man. And then later there is a "noose on a live oak tree bent over the saloon tent and meant for me and Maggie" --- people (the Father?) are now out to get them because of their "sinful lifestyle"? The narrator being a woman also contextualizes the final stanza as a plea for woman's liberation: "let me join in that line, and let me toil in that mine. Let me find what is hiding there. Let me dig where I durst. Let me drink when I thirst, and let me breathe the peril air, and breathe for my canary" Anyway, back to your original point, I think the cabbage line is just playful banter between the narrator and Maggie's ghost who sometimes speaks to her. Maggie's like, you did WHAT now?? And the narrator is like, oh, uhh nevermind dear, it was nothing. There's no evidence that Maggie is actually calmed by that, and I doubt she would be lol.
I interpreted it in pretty much the same way, the foreman's brutal death was shocking to poor kind Maggie. Either Maggie' ghost or the narrator's idealized version of her that she imagines after er death is so good-natured that the violent death of even a wicked man upsets her, hence the narrator calming her down assuring her she was just exaggerating. That's my reading anyway
