If poetry is an art then songwriting is a craft. Verbal phrases and musical phrases each have their own modes of logic and the trick is to match them up in a way that sounds natural. All songwriters try to do that to a certain extent, but Joanna Newsom seems more conscious of the actual work involved than many other tunesmiths do. And she doesn't forget that she has to convey something.
"Never get so attached to a poem," she sings in her song "En Gallop." "You forget truth that lacks lyricism." Lyricism overflows on her 2004 debut, "The Milk-Eyed Mender," but there's a hard nut of truth at the core of every song.
"I choose words specifically because of their inherent musical properties," the 23-year-old singer writes via e-mail from her boyfriend's house in Texas. "But the meaning of the lyrics is the most important thing of all -- I don't choose words arbitrarily, just based on how they sound. But I believe any idea or thought can be conveyed with an infinite number of word combinations, so it's really important to me that the lyrics behave as another contrapuntal instrumental line."