Getting Your Hands On Five Quarters Of The Orange

Joanna Newsom's Five Quarters Of The Orange came out in 2002 on Drag City, and it's essentially her first real release before The Milk-Eyed Mender put her on the map. It's a compilation of early demos, live recordings, and some tracks that never made it onto anything else. The album itself is fairly short — about 45 minutes — and it documents a version of her work that's rawer and less polished than what she'd later produce. This record went out of print a while back, so you're not walking into a store and picking it up at retail price. It's been reissued a few times, including a 2013 vinyl repress through Drag City, which is the cleanest version most people end up with. If you want digital, it's on Apple Music, Spotify, and Tidal. The CD is still available directly from Drag City's website if they have stock, though they sometimes run out. Bandcamp doesn't carry it because Drag City handles their own distribution. I've dealt with this enough times to say: the vinyl reissue is noticeably better than any pirate rips floating around. The original CD pressing had some issues with track ordering that annoyed people. The 2013 vinyl fix moved a couple of songs around to match the intended flow. Don't bother hunting down the original pressing unless you're collecting, because the sound quality difference is negligible at this point and the track listing is less coherent.

Here's something nobody tells you about this release: the demo versions on here are not alternate takes of the Milk-Eyed Mender songs. They're earlier, structurally different versions. "Only Skin" exists here in a form that barely resembles the later studio cut. If you go in expecting these to be "before" versions of the famous tracks, you'll be frustrated. They're separate compositions that share DNA, not rough drafts. Another thing people get wrong is the duration. The standard tracklist runs roughly 44 minutes, but depending on which pressing you pull, a few bonus tracks show up inconsistently. The 2013 vinyl has a slightly different sequence than the 2002 CD. I spent about twenty minutes trying to figure out why my streaming version didn't match the liner notes until I realized I was comparing a CD tracklist against a vinyl tracklist. Check what format you're actually looking at before you complain about missing tracks. If you're looking for the lowest-cost option, secondhand CDs on Discogs run anywhere from eight to twenty-five dollars depending on condition. The vinyl runs thirty to fifty. If you just want to listen without buying anything physical, the streaming availability is the most practical route. Drag City hasn't pulled it from any major platforms, which is worth noting since they've been selective about which of her back catalog shows up where.