Less than a week (four days to be exact) until Divers is released and tensions are high. Two-minute clips of each song from the record briefly surfaced (and then disappeared) last week; I listened to them twice and then put them away, sating my impatience but unwilling to spend much time with only a portion of the far surperior whole. Meanwhile, more interviews keep popping up online as Oct. 23rd approaches; The Guardian, Stereogum, and Rolling Stone both feature pretty great ones.
The P.T. Anderson-directed music video for the title track, “Divers,” is playing at independent movie theaters around the country through the 22nd; I’ve seen it twice already at my local indie movie theater Ciné and plan on at least one more viewing; truly gorgeous and spooky, the video features Newsom immersed in the surrealist pastoral artwork of Kim Keever, whose art is featured on the cover of the record.
Life keeps fumbling blissfully towards death, as Newsom sang on Ys, and as such here are some reviews of the record for those who like to read before they listen: Pitchfork, The New Yorker, The Times, NME, Chicago Tribune, The L.A. Times, NPR, (by the great critic Ann Powers, who co-wrote Tori Amos’ Piece by Piece), The Line of Best Fit, and Loud and Quiet.
Bonus: a bingo sheet for the often lazy/sexist music journalism created by Joseph Harmer just for reviews of Divers.
