2026 Repress. Double LP version; deluxe gatefold sleeve, with inserted 12"x12" booklet of lyrics. When it first appeared in 2006, Ys announced that Joanna Newsom was after something far larger than the harp-and-voice miniatures that had made her name. Five songs, fifty-five minutes, no choruses to speak of — a once-in-a-lifetime record forged into the shape of an album, and one of the singular statements of its decade. Newsom wrote and sang and played the harp; Van Dyke Parks wrote the orchestral arrangements, wrapping her melodies in the lavish, unfashionable grandeur of a lost Hollywood; Steve Albini captured it all to tape with his customary unvarnished clarity; and Jim O'Rourke mixed the two worlds into a single breathing whole. The result is music that moves like weather — the pastoral sweep of Emily, the fable-logic of Monkey & Bear, the naked confession of Sawdust & Diamonds, the sixteen-minute tidal push of Only Skin, and the grieving hush of Cosmia. Named for the mythical drowned city of Breton legend, Ys remains a work of overwhelming ambition and tenderness, its language dense as a libretto and its feeling immediate as a letter. Now reissued on double LP, it has lost none of its strange, enveloping power.
