so beautiful. i just got this album but i can't stop listening it. it may become one of my favorites ever.

beautiful. i heard the live versions, but i'm so glad she recorded it formally.

wow. she is amazing isn't she? such a wonderful different sound. i just can't get enough.

Emily too.
and only skin.. but i figured i'd just comment this one.
=)

There is a real growth seen in this song from the musical side. The construction is classical with a great melody starting with "dreid rose petals" and ending with "from coming in" and repeated later in the song. The lyrics are a paean to nature - a favorite theme but, in this case, it is so visually appealing and forward that it is easy to picture a young Joanna the midst of moths. Then, on another level, it serves as a metaphor.

Like many songs Joanna writes, she tells personal accounts of love, happiness and in this case, loneliness, through seemingly fictionalized narratives. Here i won't try to analyze the song line by line, but to me It's about someone who is trying to forget about someone/something that they have lost and had no control over losing. To do this, a certain level of ignorance (not in a bad way) must be assumed by the lonesome one, ("and all those lonely nights down by the river I was brought my bread and water") but it's so hard to forget someone who has left you, not because they don't care about you, but because they just have to sometimes. ("I cannot keep the night from comin' in why've you gone away, gone away again? I'll sleep through the rest of my days. if you've gone away again") it seems like cosmia is the person who she lost. Cosmia had seen that is wasn't rational to stay by the narrator, (Cosmia saw true light) and Joanna will wait for Cosmia until she is ready to stay near her side again.

oh yeah, i forgot. This song is my favorite on the new album. Joanna's storytelling is of immaculate and honed lyricism. and I'm so glad i have this album to explore.

i love this song, it's probably my favourite off the new album. it's stunning when she sings "and i miss your precious heart". so pretty.

On the cover the 'butterfly' is a pinned Cosmia moth.

This song is about the death of one of her best friends. Here are some quotes from an article I found:
"...The hammer blow that began this series of hard knocks [the experiences that inspired the album] was the sudden death of Newsom’s best friend, 'one of the loves of my life.' Newsom got the call while she was driving between gigs, during the year when her career was first blowing up. 'So mortality is huge on this record. And there’s more than one type of death, of course, and that’s where the turmoil of the relationship figures in, but not quite as largely as you might suppose.'”


"After the singer gets the devastating news, she walks into a cornfield, and moths almost drown her. Later, she invokes the classic image of moths immolating themselves in the artificial sun of a porch-light—those attractive but dubious goals towards which so many of us so readily plunge. But here wild Cosmia, her form a thing of water and fire, flutters off on a farther flight, towards the possibility of a 'true light' that might even shine back down here, when the night comes in.

"Like the whole record, 'Cosmia' affirms life without offering a wisp of false consolation. 'The thing that I was experiencing and dwelling on the entire time is that there are so many things that are not OK and that will never be OK again,' says Newsom. 'But there’s also so many things that are OK and good that sometimes it makes you crumple over with being alive. We are allowed such an insane depth of beauty and enjoyment in this lifetime. It’s what my dad talks about sometimes. He says the only way that he knows there’s a God is that there’s so much gratuitous joy in this life. And that’s his only proof. There’s so many joys that do not assist in the propagation of the race or self-preservation. There’s no point whatsoever. They are so excessively, mind-bogglingly joy-producing that they distract from the very functions that are supposed to promote human life. They can leave you stupefied, monastic, not productive in any way, shape or form. And those joys are there and they are unflagging and they are ever-growing. And still there are these things that you will never be able to feel OK about–unbearably awful, sad, ugly, unfair things.'”


"Towards the end of high school, when she was eighteen, Newsom went down alone to a wild spot along the river. After asking their assistance, she arranged some stones into a circle, and then sat down within the ring. She stayed in the circle for three days, fasting, facing the river. Her best friend and some pals camped a few miles away, bringing her water and small portions of rice while she slept. She had assigned herself things to do but abandoned them all. She just sat there and watched the river, and, even more, she listened to it.

“'I was a completely different person before I went to the river, and a completely different person after,' Newsom says. When she first got back the girl was a total wreck. She would start crying when she woke up and not quit until she slept. She stopped going to school. She’d pick up the local paper, and read a headline like 'Man Dies in Car Crash,' and then the crash would be in her mind, and the man’s bloody crumbled body, and his pain and dread and fearful exit from this world. 'None of the calluses or borders or walls we put up to protect ourselves from going absolutely insane while experiencing life – none of those stood anymore. They had been worn completely away. I was like infantile and dysfunctional, a weepy, drunk mess.'”

So yes--you find more and more that her songs don't just contain literary symbolism and abstractness, but they're her way of putting into words some of those close and visual memories she has of life and relationships, things that she has stored on her own heart.

I hate to be picky, but absolutely the only thing I don't love about this album is the way she sings "kith and the kin". I almost want to censor the sound she makes with her voice at those two points in the song.

I'd like to comment on the whole album, Ys. It's an interesting album and I mean that in a few senses of the word - brave, difficult, experimental, awkward and self-indulgent. I hope she returns to the form of The Milk-Eyed Mender.

I love this song! My mom makes fun of her voice but i absolutely love it, lol. it's also pretty interesting how she mentions moths a lot and cosmia is also the scientific name for moth.

Ys is one of the best records I have ever heard.

This song is about looking at the world through rose-colored glasses, and then suddenly not.

"Dried rose petals, red brown circles,
frame your eyes and stain your knuckles"

rose-colored glasses

"Help me Cosmia I'm grieving"

Think of it as "Cos I am grieving". Pretty clever there.

This song is just beautiful to me. It came into my life at the same time my Grandmother died, and it just seemed to be the only expression of how I felt in the world. Just everything about it is amazing.

I just wanted to say that at the start when she describes the moths surrounding her in the corn field and almost drowning her, I think she's talking about how she's drowning in memories of her friend because she calls her friend Cosmia later in the song and Cosmia is the name for a moth.

This is probably the greatest elegy ever written.

oh how i do love this song

This album is preposterously good.

Uncanny, really.

I only just heard of Joanna Newsom a couple of months ago. I went to see Larkin Grimm and Orion Rigel Dommisse. (Two fabulous artists in their own right; I highly recommend checking them out.) I was surprised there were so few people at that show and a woman there told me Joanna Newsom was playing the same night.

"Who?"

I asked.

Now I feel like I've known her my whole life and even before.

So prophetic, so talented, and my God, so young!

This song is ridiculously gorgeous. I can't even begin to analyze it; that's the thing I love about Joanna's lyrics. I can't understand it at all, and I don't feel like I need to to enjoy her music. It's just...amazing.

the last bit, wow. i teared up. Joanna, New Buffalo, and Andrew Bird are the only ones that have done so.

I also can't stand the way she says the kith and the kin.

and I love this song, think it's absolutely beautiful, but I hate how sharp her voice is at the start of each "and i miss your..." it hurts my ears. it's like glass breaking. in all actuality, her voice almost repelled me when I first listened to her. her music is beautiful, but she isn't blessed with a lovely voice.

haha, lots of people have talked about her voice, i just find her voice like her music on this album. slightly offbeat, strange and possibly distracting on the first listen, yet it really grows on you to the point that it sounds totally engaging and unique. for the record, i like her voice. =)

to me, this song is so lush, so mysterious, and so fitting for something to remember a person by. the surreal but natural imagery used by Ms Newsom really captures the attention of the listener, especially the moths by the fire. this is striking as death is very accurately captured in the scene.

I think its about two key themes. Firstly Cosmia is a reference to the cosmos, the universe. Joanna is writing about someone maybe even herself, losing their connection to the universe/their surroundings. Its about isolation.

Secondly, its about really really really needing bread and water. Two key ingredients in a healthy lifestyle, she's promoting healthy living rather than obesity.

Personally I enjoy how she sings the entire song, including "Kith and the kin" because her voice is so unique, and it just works for the songs.

Anyways, in response to the 'Red-rimmed Glasses' comment. I would like to ask how glasses stain your knuckles?

(I really enjoy singing along to her songs... Its like a vocal workout. Haha!)

cosmia is a moth specie

I'm thinking the rose-colored stanza is not about glasses, but circular windowpanes. it makes sense to me - they frame your eyes as well, and you can have your knuckles stained if you try to break the glass with your own hands.