Ys

This is the follow-up to 'Milk Eyed Mender' which was released in 2004. By the end of that year Joanna was opening for Neil Young, selling a ton of records and became the face of the new folk movement alongside Devendra Banhart. The record ended up in all the best end of year polls and reviews were dythirambic.

The instrument count includes harp, strings, woodwinds, and brass plus dulcimer, marimba, various percussive instruments (including a horse skull!), banjo, mandolin, electric bass guitar (played by master of mellow Lee Sklar), electric guitar (played by jazz-great (and-definitive-MAD-magazine-authority) Grant Geisseman), and accordion played by Van Dyke himself.

If this seems like a bit of an overfull house - wait till you hear the mix Jim O'Rourke made of it! It's light and lilting, with Joanna front and centre and sounds blowing and tearing and swelling around her, in perfect consort. The wide-screen beauty of Y's is due to, among other things, a scrupulously all-analog production involving forty-odd tracks spread over two synched-up 24-track tape machines, mixed to tape and mastered at Abbey Road, home of the all-analog mastering path!