11. Joanna NewsomYs
Ys was such a leap into another stratosphere in terms of the ambition of it and the scope of it. When I first heard it, I just heard white noise. I liked her first record so much that I stuck with it and when it finally clicked it was like a speedball or something. It was so powerful and I think I was walking in public and I just started crying. Whatever I was doing I had to stop, and then everything else came together too. Ys has been universally acclaimed and many people can talk about why it’s good, but there is something about having put all that effort in and really been very patient, and tolerating all the ambiguity of ‘I don’t know if I’m ever going to like this but I am going to wait and see’, that when it really gelled the payoff was immeasurable. It was the size of a football field. The record has this monumental weight in my life and I don’t let a year go by without listening to it. A 24-year-old person made this record. I mean, what? It’s an outrageous record, and I love it.
