Divers *** Vinyl

Further along and down the road apiece from where she took her leave of us, Joanna Newsom plays on. Breathe deep and equalize your today-ears to the new world of Divers... The music of Divers is a wonder of considered arrangements-a taut line, threaded with the pearls of passed and passing times...a round, a chant, an incantation...a ray of light diverted eleven ways, into eleven songs that striate, in chromatic collusion, their simultaneous arc...a span that takes in lifetimes, but is immaculately sequenced for telescoped brevity. At the center of the mythos and the maelstrom is the woman. Divers reminds us that Newsom is a melodist, above all-an acolyte of melody and beauty in form, a crackerjack of emotional truth conveyed with undiluted immediacy.