No One I Know Likes Joanna Newsom

Sure, Joanna Newsom's Ys is the fourth-best reviewed album of 2006, according to Metacritic, and Pitchfork gave it a 9.4. Oh...and Boilen, whose listeners picked Ys the sixth-best record of 2006, invited Newsom to guest DJ on All Songs Considered and, to my delight, showed affection for her squeak. So what? No one I've played Ys for likes it.

Geoff G. has ripped it already on this blog, Becca said she liked it but I thought she'd love it and I'm thinking she only said it was good to get me to shut up, the Doran girls both despise it, Steph hasn't heard it but I'm convinced her hatred of Bjork will override her love of Kate Bush is this case, and now Jen is even using my interest in Newsom to rip my taste, musical and otherwise.

Will this deter me? Not really. Cosmia and Only Skin put me directly in touch with my inner lesbian and it's okay for it to be a private joy that no one around me understands. Still, I'd like a loving-Joanna-Newsom partner to discuss and gush with. We can take harp lessons together, chase butterflies through fields, pray to the fucking moon goddess - you know, the kind of crap the arty kids were doing back in high school when I was still a right-wing Nazi.

Actually, I think this is kind of symptomatic of my general need for more music nerd friends. I used to have loads online at Murmurs, but I don't have much time for that anymore, though I post when I can. Jen can appreciate the majority of my music, but she only seems to remember the Joanna Newsoms and the Antonys of the world when we argue about how she likes the new Beyonce song. There is not a single person in my everyday life who has ever heard of Shearwater except if I've told them.

In grad school, Scott and I became friends because we both knew the same obscure reference from a Neil Young bootleg. In Prague, Ryan and I adopted eachother's musical collections. In college, Geoff G. and I shared musical tastes (although I'll never forgive him for skipping out on the midnight sale of Up at Tower Records). In high school, Steph admits, she would have loved My Brightest Diamond but now says it's too dark for her. And Helen is never online anymore.

So if you're reading this and would like to become my new music nerd friend, let me know. Even if you don't like Joanna Newsom.

[Joanna Newsom fans, unite!]