This and That: Sprout and Bean

Joanna Newsom: Sprout and Bean

[purchase]

If you're not yet familiar with Joanna Newsom, you may be annoyed by her at first. Many people are immediately turned off by her childish, quirky mouse-voice. However, it is definitely worth it to get past your initial response and learn to appreciate her delicate, humorous, lyrical, music.

A classically trained harp player, Joanna is a diverse and prolific artist. In addition to her solo work, she plays harp for Nervous Cop and piano for The Pleased. Her two solo albums are also very different from one another, with the first being a collection of short pop-folk songs played on harp or piano, and the second being a massive folk-opera with complete symphony orchestration and no songs shorter than seven minutes.

The featured song is from her first album, The Milk-Eyed Mender, and it's a mystery to me what it's about.