Ever wonder if the universe is baiting you?

See, it's not that I dislike her or even have strong feeling about her or that I think people shouldn't listen to her or are fools for doing so. If a musician gives you special squishy feelings, makes you laugh or cry or shake your fist, or whatever: I do not stand in the way of your enjoyment. I offer opinions insofar as my own feelings about the music are concerned, but I do not judge or criticize you. Moreover, as long as I feel a musician is making the music they want to make (as opposed to packaged shit that they know sells, like Celine Dion, Britney, or whatever), I say, godspeed to you and him/her.

It's just that, sometimes, I don't understand how the hipster mind operates.

Madrigals, early music, children's songs, fey British folk, psychedelia, harp music: these all exist. They have existed for centuries in some cases. Like twerpy spacey chick singing? Buy a Joni Mitchell or Judy Collins record. Bizarre meandering lyrics? Send Jandek ten bucks. Modern interpretation of Baroque classical, polyphony, and madrigals? Medieval Baebes, Rasputina, or what have you. Its all there, it didn't need to be reinvented; reintroduced, rather, in a more palatably hip format.

Re: the latter Baroquemadripolyphony genre and its forebears. Beyond my wife (who introduced me to this stuff) and myself, I don't think I've known anyone into the above genres. Ever. I've never seen an Anonymous 4 album reviewed in Maximumrocknroll I don't recall the merits of The King's Singers versus the Hilliard Ensemble ever being discussed in Forced Exposure.

I get weird looks when I spin some of this stuff for friends, what with its fa-la-la'ing, poncey phraseology, odd time signatures, and weird harmonies. I don't care, I think its pretty, even as I realize how lame it seems. I don't know how many of you were around during the the 70s. I was, and I remember a time when every high school had a madrigals group (I think it had something to do with the popularity of the musical Camelot). They'd mostly perform around Christmastime, in full doublets and pointy princess hats, and sing about figgy pudding and how yon mistress' merrymaid doth gambol in the snowflakes whence she threw the busted leather flintcraw over the loose weave of the saddlecock and rode on in the friscalating dusklight. I get the impression the madrigal folks were the people the chess club beat up. When I listen to madrigals and such, I love it, but I understand how it's perceived by most folks. Lame. Not that I care or agree, I just recognize this perception.

So, Joanna Newsom.

Suddenly a harp-playing dryad with a weenie voice shows up and she's the shit. Wha-huh? The cynic in me says that because she played with Smog, Steve "I wouldn't wipe my ass with the Cocteau Twins" Albini produce the album, Jim O'Rourke stopped by to remix it all, and she backs up her harp (a harp! a harp!) with a wall of modern sound, all the critics and hipsters decided, "Say, there must something to this." Cynic me has a good point. But because Cynic me tends to go off half-cocked, I decided to listen to her more closely on iTunes.

And I'm still confused.

I like to think I'm pretty diverse in my musical tastes. Some of you probably figure I'm up to my nose in blues 78s and that I consider all music made after 1939 to be excreta dropped from the Devil's anus. Not so. Running through my collection is like following an Amazon recommendation string from Johannes Ockeghem to Ken Vandermark. That said, Newsom' music has some good bits—she's dealing with some pretty advanced ideas for her age (24)—but it still feels like an experimental muddle of indulgence. I have the same problem with Arcade Fire. There's all kindsa things happening, but the more I listen the more I feel like the blasting miasma of sound is there to overwhelm and distract the listener until they surrender and say the music must be smarter than they are.

Anyway, I liken it all to talking to an inventor of a perpetual motion machine who has his psycho-physio-babble patter down to the brain-boggling point where you think, by golly, maybe he's onto something. Even though you know there's no such goddamn thing as a perpetual motion machine.

Which leads me to another tangent: the artist who determinedly has no category. This is a very tricky way to maintain a career. Usually it leads to developing a style that's outre and banishes you from airplay, but is still marketable to your hardcore fans while drawing in new listeners, even if only for an single album. Kate Bush, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Cat Power, and others all do this. By word of mouth Captain Beefheart continues to hold firm as a musical genius, though some (not me) would debate this. And they all are geniuses, to varying degrees... But why is it considered necessarily so? And why is it if Tom Waits were to decide to record a straight up anthology of his favorite Monkees tunes (no megaphones, cookie monster vocals, theremins, musical saws, farsifa organs, barn creakings, or even a Charlie Musselwhite cameo... I'm talking Tom out and out covering "Last Train to Clarksville" without irony), there would still be a huge segment of critics who would not say, "Omigod, Tom has slipped a cog!" but rather, "My God, the man's GENIUS is unstoppable!"

One last notion, I suspect that sometimes the hipsters are looking for permission to be soft and fuzzy once in a while. Do what you will with that.