Joanna Newsom – Ys

Maybe I had too high expectations, but the sound is not always up to the standard of other Albini productions. Given the names involved, I expected something more. I have to try the CD

Sound quality of vocal differs from track to track. For example, "Emily" is muddy, "Only Skin" is perfect.
Not a bad sounding album, not a great one, too.

Got a pressing from 19/20. Sounds great with very minimal surface noise.

The distortion is awful. Using a 2M Ortofon Blue. This album really needs the audiofile treatment

Great pressing, quite quiet. Sound quality is good and the only minor distortion I may have experienced is on “Sawdust & Diamonds”, and even then it’s very minor. Listening to this record while reading the lyrics in the gatefold like it’s a big book is an amazing experience. I would recommend this fantastic album!

Joanna is different, constructs her songs differently and sings differently accordingly. You can like that or not. Admittedly, Joanna's music can be exhausting under certain circumstances, because her voice and the way she plays with it take a lot of getting used to. But that is also the case with free jazz style music. This is not music for "incidental" listening, but, as with Joanna, for conscious listening. So you have to be in the mood, preferably very relaxed, to discover the many fine details and twists. Then it will be a very interesting journey.
A few words about the pressing or pressings in general. My pressing is impeccable, although some background noises can be heard, but they are not dominant. As we know, this is unfortunately the standard with vinyl these days, because there are not enough skilled personnel, not enough presses and, unfortunately, more and more flegmatic employees who obviously lack an understanding of quality and a long-term job guarantee. The more bad products are put on the market, the more customers will turn away and either buy CDs again or prefer the digital way. And that's it for the supposedly secure jobs. They are sawing the branch they are sitting on. But even slight correlations seem rather overwhelming for the mind. Be that as it may, as long as the cow gives milk, it will be milked. As a vinyl lover since the 70s, I now almost only buy "second hand", hoping that the seller is honest about the condition of the records. That is usually the case. Because most records from the 70s, 80s up to the middle of the 90s rarely need a so-called "remaster". This nonsense was only invented to delay the decline of the music industry, because sales had plummeted massively in the 90s. And truth be told, most records and CDs of the last 30 years are not remastered, but rather a marketing gag, because operating the controls on the console has little to do with remastering. Steven Wilson once wrote a very good essay about this, which I can only recommend to anyone interested.

Reached out to Drag City to see if we can get information on pressing dates. The rep I spoke to said the album has been pressed more than 50 times since 2006, but they don't consider them "reissues" because it's been the same plant pressing them all along.

What we don't know is if are they making new stampers from the master every time they repress, and since there aren't subsequent pressing dates listed it's harder to track batches that may have had lower sound quality from batches with higher quality.

The rep said they'd try to track down the pressing-date info and to see if there are variations in the runout codes between pressings. Who knows when/if they'll ever respond, but it was a worthwhile question.

I picked up a copy of what I'm assuming is the 2022 repressing and can post a review when I get a chance to listen to it.

Can anyone confirm if the recent 2022 re-release has the same distortion issues as per some other releases?

Can we normalize giant lyric-books bound into the inside of gatefold album covers?

Re-released recently on Bandcamp for $26. Spread the love, avoid scalpers!