Once in a blue moon, I'm washed up on the metaphorical shore of a new island in the sea of songs, the seemingly private beach of a sad and solitary young woman sending her breathtakingly honest words into the salty air. They call me to them, I want to believe. I'm odd like that. First, there was Margaret O'brien, the darling child from bittersweet old movies like The Secret Garden and The Canterville Ghost. Don't laugh, my ultramodern friends, she had something in her manner and precocious innocence that my ten-year old heart never found in Shirley Temple. Next, I fell in love with Alicia Witt; a momentary flirtation with madness in the guise of a red-haired waif. She has since grown to be something less than my imagination promised, though now oddly sexy as hell. Much later, I was introduced to a truly untouchable mystery in Hope Sandoval. She who stood barefoot on stage with her back to the audience. She led me into dark places and taught me secret meanings of everyday words...though I've never had the pleasure of her company. Has anyone, really?

But this one, this fairy voice with fingers plucking harpstrings? She's a star still rising. She's writing and touring and recording and...and singing songs I could swear I dreamed after my mother read me to sleep with The Adventures of Reddy Fox. She is Joanna Newsom, born when I was already beginning my teens, but a muse as timeless as Lilly Langtry or Vera Lynn. If you don't google up some of her music before she hits the pop charts and gets transmogrified into a Hollywood star, I'll come to your house and beat you with a licorice cat of nine tails. And if you don't also lose your heart to her...I guess you're not as hopelessly romantic as I am.