„As with Scott Walker’s late music, the results are songs with the effect of completely immersive, living and breathing worlds, each with their own internal logics, dynamics and (often bent) laws of physics. It’s a pleasure to be allowed to wander through them — and none more so than the title track of Joanna Newsom’s ‚Divers‘ itself, where an underwater world’s cool synthetic glow is pinpricked by harp notes that catch like sunlight on the ocean surface. Space appears to distort as the song’s story of distant love progresses, with the narrator sinking ever-further from the sun’s glow amid torrents of piano and woodwind, until finally she dissolves into pure sensation, lost entirely to the passing of time.“ – Rory Gibb in an excellent review (The Quietus) of Joanna Newsom’s forthcoming album „Divers“ (Drag City)
„Most artists on their fourth album settle into atrophy, or at least comfort, Newsom delivers such complex, nuanced music, filled with arcane constructions, that she is only her own yardstick. (In a recent interview about Divers, David Longstreth cited The Milk-Eyed Mender as one of the reasons he quit college: „[What] am I doing here if someone is already out there making music like this, on this level?“) Her consummate craft is a given; what surprises every time is her ceaselessly renewing sensitivity for life’s vicissitudes and the fantastic ways she finds to express them. Divers is not a puzzle to crack, but a dialog that generously articulates the intimate chasm of loss, the way it’s both irrational and very real. Nothing will stem the fear of a loved one’s death, which western culture does little to prepare us for until the very end, but by pulling at the prospect of mortality from every angle, Newsom emerges straighter-spined, and invites you to stand alongside her.“ (Laura Snapes in another impressive review in pitchfork)
