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Sapokanikan is a great song in my opinion. Divers is a great album. It's not quite as perfect as Ys, but I really think it is a fantastic album.
As for Kate Bush and Tori Amos, I don't really have anything to say about either at the moment. Kate Bush is a cultural treasure, at least for the Brits. She's made some truly fascinating music, though very little of her material speaks to me personally in any kind of way. But she's certainly a brilliant artist. Tori's always struck me as a bit of an opportunist, and her fans can kill a buzz faster than a police raid. Also, she's so goddamn annoying.
Joanna Newsom has never struck me as the same kind of artist, though I suppose the Kate Bush influence is kind of impossible to deny. Her sound is sometimes considered challenging (almost notoriously so according to some) but I genuinely think she's accessible in the best possible way. You don't need to be into experimental music to appreciate "Emily" (though it probably helps if you've spent some time with artists who reject basic "rules" of song structure; maybe I wouldn't have been an immediate fan if I hadn't already loved Sonic Youth and Tortoise and Slint, but who knows?)
There's just a really beautiful quality to her music that I think anyone (post-punks, Dylan fans, Arcade Fire/Broken Social Scene types, fucking Mumford and sons lovers, or whoever else) can appreciate if they're not too rigid about those "rules"... that's not really the case with Kate Bush and it's certainly not true of Tori.
I think of Joanna Newsom as more of a Jim O'Rourke kind of character. Or possibly a Tom Waits. Not a godforsaken lover-me-or-loathe-me Tori/Sufjan type.
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