Since The Milk-Eyed Mender was released, two and a half yearshave passed, more or less. And...

Joanna Newsom spent a lot time moving around - firsttouring much of the United States and then Europe, over andover and over. It was nice sometimes. There was an amazingtour of Japan, Australia, and New Zealand (with Smog) and abeautiful trip in Iceland where a couple of shows were played.Along the road, there were lots of festivals to play as well:Bonaroo, Sasquatch, Green Man, Rothskilde, ATP, and thePatti Smith-curated Meltdown Festival...maybe even a fewothers. Joanna played a benefit concert with her hero NeilYoung too. She blew everyone away at all these shows, by theway.

In moments not involving the harp, the singing and theaudiences around the world, there were other travels - like acar trip through Portugal with her flute-playing friend Ariella(one of the few people Joanna's played with so far onstage;though shows of the near-future will hopefully involve manyother players) and a few weeks in Costa Rica on a family kayakingvacation. At some point in there, Joanna moved fromSan Francisco back to the hills of northern California.

The eleven or so months preceding the recording of Yswere spent like this (take it, Jo!):

Two of the songs were already written by the time I came up withthe plan to set them to orchestral accompaniment. Three more werewritten from the ground up with the intention to orchestrate themin mind. All are intended to be playable with or without accompaniment,and I've already played them solo in a live context quite a bit.

Vocals and harp parts were recorded first, with Steve Albini. Themain reason for starting this way was that Van Dyke wanted to basehis arrangements on a final version of the songs, not 'scratch' versions,given the fact that I tend to improvise and vary each performanceslightly. Van Dyke felt that every nuance of the performance wouldinform his arrangements. A happy byproduct of this necessary orderof events was that the vocals and harp were recorded in a climate ofquietness, ease, and spontaneity, allowing for the retention of a senseof intimacy and immediacy. The goal I had in mind was for the harpand vocals to feel like they were developing unawares of the presenceof the orchestra, unburdened by any of the self-consciousness/formality/austerity/stiltedness this might provoke....as if the orchestra ishanging in a hallucinatory shimmer around the more substantialharp and voice.

Albini mic'd the harp in an insane and never-before-done manner!I'd love to describe it further but I don't want to give away his ideas,in case he wants to do it again sometime.

Van Dyke was then given the vocal and harp tracks, along with apile of notes from me (mostly non-technical, i.e. describing moods, colors,images, scenes and concepts I wanted to project or produce in eachsong, line-by-line, bar-by-bar). In the months that followed, he'd sendme various drafts of the arrangements, and I'd send him back notesabout what worked for me and what didn't.Everything he sent, fromday one, was amazing and lovely; the struggle, in editing and refiningthe drafts, mostly centered on trying to come up with arrangementsthat reflected Van Dyke's singular compositional voice and ideas, butstill resonated completely with me and felt seamlessly bound to myown music. This took many drafts!

Eventually I went to LA to work directly with him in his studio,combing though the arrangements bar-by-bar, till both of us felthappy with the result, and both felt a sense of ownership and closenessto it.

All the arrangement work took approximately eight months.

The orchestral recording sessions took place in the spring, overthree days, with an additional day at the end for vocal harmonies,percussion, and Van Dyke's accordion. Van Dyke conducted the orchestra.He is a great conductor.

The engineer for these sessions was Tim Boyle, who did an amazingjob. The recording was done in analog (as was, of course, the sessionwith Steve); many of the younger orchestral musicians had neverrecorded to tape before...and the older players hadn't recorded to tapefor years (this is in LA, remember). There was much ado and freaking-out at the sound of tape rewinding.

Mixing was done in New York City by Jim O'Rourke. He ruledso much. I'm a huge admirer of all his work and I couldn't think ofanybody else who matches his combination of symphonic/ classicalliteracy (in both arrangement and engineering terms) with experimentalismand analog-fluency. He made the record sound the way Iwanted it to sound. He edited quite a bit, and tweaked and carvedit, allowing the songs to be at the center of the record, above and beyondall the instrumental influences. Just about every track on thewhole album is in constant flux, and Jim was able to achieve the hallucinatoryorchestral wash-effect I wanted, with parts rising up anddropping in and out almost weightlessly, disappearing without muchnotice and reappearing as if they'd been there the whole time.

...and that's just about how it happened!

...thank you, Ms. Newsom. As the record was being conceived,written, recorded and completed, more requests forshows and more shows and albums and personal appearancesand interviews and correspondence of all kinds were pouringin. What little could be afforded to do was done and the restwas put off until the album was done.

The release date for Ys is November 14, 2006. Joannawill tour America in October, November and December andconsider what to do with the rest of the world afterwards.