New Album Alert : Joanna Newsom - Divers

SQUEEEE! You can stream her whole new album Divers right now via NPR. I liken this to reading a choose your own adventure book that has no definitive plot (no two listener take aways will be the same!) and may require a dictionary to understand all the words she uses to spin her delicately orchestrated webs. It is as if Kate Bush and Björk  (who apparently has been a singing coach of sorts to her) has created a chamber Pop opera and given birth to a star whose voice flits like a sprite through a maze of tall grass and mushroom caps houses. If you hate reading but love a good story, this is the gift you have been waiting for. Her vocabulary and use of language is a thing to behold. I am not sure I am smart enough to grasp and unravel all of the thematic layers found on this new record but I feel like a better person for at least trying. Prepare to be awed and English majors, there are a good 100 thesis papers to be found in her body of work.

Not recommended - playing Scrabble against her. I am 100% certain Newsom would win. Apparently Slate agrees.