So, it’s taken us a week to get over being over the hype surrounding Joanna Newsom’s concert at BAM. But we’re over it. And now…we’re into it. No, for realz.

What y’all might not understand is that C.C. has a genetic “anti-hype” condition, that is, we are biologically incapable of liking anything that has been over-hyped. There’s no medicine that can cure it. No homeopathic concoction nor acupuncture session will alleviate our suffering. It’s just not possible.

That’s why we aimed our ire at the Newsom fanatics in the opening paragraph of our review, a move that seems to have turned off a few readers. You know, we thought it was kinda funny. All we can say is: They’re not all good bits.

At any rate, we’ve-

Hold on. Let’s switch to the first person singular:

I’ve been listening to Newsom’s “Ys” pretty much every day since I saw her live.

As I’ve already said here, and here, she’s best on her own; alone. I’m also being discussed over at The Stranger again. Gotta love the West Coast! I chime in near the end of the comments, making my case for popping the balloon of the Newsom evangelists.

But it seems, what started out as an attempt to really listen to her work, and to consider it with seriousness, has led to an appreciation.

On a music-nerd note, I’ve figured out the progression, all in my little old head, of that part about the “meteors”: If we are in e minor (I haven’t checked the recording to a keyboard), it goes e - A - b - D - C - e; or, in Roman numerals, i - IV - v - VII - VI -i. Those are modal chords, not meant to be Schenkerian. Lower case = minor chord; upper case = major chord. What’s hot is the chromatic alteration (C-sharp) that makes the IV chord sound dorian, until she waxes over it and gets us back into a nice aeolian. Again, I’m not sure about the key.

I also identified another of my knee-jerk reactions against “Ys”: It evokes the past. I’ve never been one to lionize history. I like the present; opportunity to set precedent. I tend even more–and to a fault–to like the future, the other something that literally does not exist. So I get my resistance to Newsom’s days-of-yore aesthetics.

But the aesthetic of sepia happens to be how Joanna Newsom situates her skills. That’s her interest, and that fine with me. Although I still wish there were more spacious moments where pause could give us the opportunity to reflect a little more on her lyrics. And also, I’d probably have gotten into her a little more easily if her lyrics were a little less fixed, more open to a variety of associations.

It’s still not classical music, but I don’t think that she has ever made that assertion: I was responding more to certain music critic’s pointing to her as a crossover artist or something.

At any rate, criticism seems to have led me through a transformation of my initial impressions of Ms. Newsom’s work. And if that isn’t the greatest achievement of criticism, I don’t know what is.