Magnolia and The Master director Paul Thomas Anderson has directed the video for Sapokanikan, the new single from US singer and harpist Joanna Newsom.
Newsom releases her new album Divers later this month, her first album in five years. Anderson became involved when the musician received a text from the director asking her to read sections from Thomas Pynchon’s novel Inherent Vice on which his film of the same name is based.
Newsom duly recorded passages from the novel, and appeared in the film as Sortilège, confidante to Joaquin Phoenix's Larry "Doc" Sportello character.
Typical of the adventurously quirky Newsom, Sapokanikan features a number of arcane references, including Shelley’s sonnet Ozymandias and a name check of one John Purroy Mitchel, the “Boy Mayor” of New York City in the early years of the twentieth century.
The title of the song derives from the name of a Native American village that was situated in lower Manhattan, prior to the arrival of Dutch colonisers.
Newsom - who is married to the comedian and actor Andy Samberg - told The Observer newspaper that writing Sapokanikan was not about gathering facts. “I don’t know I’d describe what I’m doing leading up to that song as ‘research’,” she said.
“For me, it’s more having a hunch and following through on the hunch. Having an almost religious faith in the fact that certain things are connected and I have to lasso them all into the same place. Research: that word feels so cold to me in a way, because it’s all very compulsive and very emotion-driven.”
With her warbling, child-like voice and obscure lyrics, 33-year-old Newsom is definitely outside the mainstream. However, her first two albums, The Milk-Eyed Mender and Ys, respectively sold 200,000 and 250,000 copies each.
