ED KING REPORTS: Show of hands, please: Who else found Mackenzie Phillips’ annoying kid sister character in American Graffiti kind of hot and wished that Paul LeMat’s Milner character would drop his noble rebel pose and give the girl the ride she deserved? As I listen to Ys, Joanna Newsom’s new rallying call for indie guys who love
art school girls, sadly for the most part, from afar, and as I work hard to tune out constantly repeated critical buzz phrases like “classically trained” and “Van Dyke Parks,” I’m reminded of the desire my young, twisted teenage heart felt for homely kid sister Carol. I’m also reminded of the desire my slightly older, more twisted heart felt for the character I imagined in the music of Kate Bush’s The Dreaming. Later Bjork would briefly wield this power over me and for a briefer time yet, Victoria Williams. It’s the musical equivalent of falling for one of the awkward ugly ducklings nearing the end of her duckling phase in a Robert Altman film, say Shelley Duvall in Thieves Like Us or Sissy Spacek in 3 Women. As aural erotica for guys with certain tastes, Newsom is This Year’s Model. Musically, however, it’s all the greasy, pimply, gum-snapping, precociousness that Milner should have reigned in and developed. I didn’t suffer through high school working toward the overthrow of Journey, Kansas, and Styx so that young people today could get their groove on to something that sounds like a late-80s Nonesuch release of modern-day practitioners of madrigals. Don’t get me wrong, it was cool scoring the free copy of said 
Nonesuch release from the book store where I worked back then, but its use on mix tapes was limited. The Dreaming served me well, even introduced me to a few of those characters I’d imagined lurking in its songs, but they weren’t my destination. I had my own drive to complete. Like Milner, I’d keep my eyes on the road and my hands upon the wheel.
VERDICT: Joanna Newsom Is The New Olive Oyl
MySpace: Joanna Newsom’s MySpace Even More Lame Than Phawker’s