Recently-unveiled Australian tour dates aside, news on Joanna Newsom can be hard to come by. That is, if you’ve limited your search to the music section of your local magazine rack/Borders/internet. Your favorite indie harpist with the most divisive unique voice can best be followed in fashion media these days.
It’s fitting (no pun intended) then, that a big news update just arrived via W magazine, where Newsom appeared here, dressed up in Giorgio Armani and photographed by Inez van Lamsweerde & Vınoodh Matadin. As I’m not much of a fashionista, it’s this part of the caption that truly caught my eye: “She recently finished work on a new album.”
New album, you say, but what/where/why/when/how? Sure, rumors flew this summer, but those didn’t pan out. Let’s look to those trusted fashion mags, yet again:
“Yoko Ono and son Sean Lennon held court by the deejay booth while Joanna Newsom (in town recording her new album) chatted with her boyfriend, SNL’s Andy Samberg.”
That’s Vogue’s Sara Moonves on the opening of a new designer clothing shop in Japan, featuring designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy of label Rodarte, whom Newsom interviewed for Hobo magazine. Now why would Joanna Newsom be in Japan to record her follow-up to Ys? Sure, Ys collaborator Jim O’Rourke lives there now and… Okay, this shit just got real.