Hear Joanna Newsom’s Lush ‘Leaving the City’
Joanna Newsom‘s husband Andy Samberg showcased his pipes during the Emmy Awards’ epic opening number Sunday night, and now Monday brings a new track by Newsom titled “Leaving the City.” The sweeping, ornamental song is the second single off Newsom’s upcoming Divers, her first LP since 2010’s Have One on Me.
“I believe in you / Do you believe in me? / What do you want to do? / But we’re leaving the city / On a black boat,” Newsom sings amidst the gentle plucking of a harp, trickles of piano and somber droning of a Marxophone. Newsom performed the track’s instruments along with brother Peter, who plays drums on “Leaving the City.” After gliding along for 90 seconds, the track revs up as the drums kick in and Newsom’s poetic diction fastens, propelling to a climatic point before unwinding.
“Leaving the City” joins Divers‘s first single “Sapokanikan,” which was accompanied by a video helmed by Paul Thomas Anderson (who directed Newsom in Inherent Vice). Newsom previously described her 11-track new album as “a wheeling circuit of sci-fi sea-shanties and cavalier ballads; a family of polysemic song-sets; a paranomasaic Liederkreis of harmonic sympathies and knotted hierarchies; a fanfare of brazen puns and martial lullabies, blazing in sorrow and horseplay and love, in turns symphonic and spare.”
The album also features musical arrangements from Nico Muhly, Ryan Francesconi and the Dirty Projectors’ Dave Longstreth. Divers arrives on October 23rd, but is available on pre-order at Drag City or iTunes.