so tell me, why is Kaputt better or worse than Let England Shake?

yeah i was just gonna mention that leno performance!

i've only seen PJH live four times but she was amazing each time - i keep ending up seeing her in "event" venues (first ever rock gig at the tate modern during the stories era - her worst album but she killed it live; at the troxy to kick off the LES tour, and at the royal albert hall to conclude it)

i saw her on the uh huh her tour, and that's probably the album of hers that means the least to me, but she decided to play all the loudest songs in her catalogue and it was delightful.

I haven't felt anything I might say about it would be better or more interesting than what others have already said. I try (mostly unsuccessfully) to watch out for those situations.

Destroyer is a case where lots of people say rong things, so it motivates me to say more than I normally would about such a p4k feted album. Whereas if a critic likes Let England Shake they're usually in the ballpark of capturing why it's such a compelling album and then the key variable is how good a writer they are, with nuance vs grandstanding being a vector. If it needs more work from a critical perspective it's probably in lyrical analysis but as I normally let it wash over me I'm certainly not the person for it.

PJ Harvey : weird :: Salvador Dali : trippy

i think pj was the last time U2 had someone 'challenging' open for them. they had a good run of those for awhile (public enemy, for one), but the last several times i saw them it was black eyed peas, no doubt, damian marley, kings of leon.... : /

maybe they should corral destroyer for a show?

Man, White Chalk is probably my least favorite PJH album. But I can also imagine coming around to it at some point

Mine too – the monotony of mood.

I like LES but I don't love it the way I love some of PJ Harvey's other albums - there are a few songs I'm not crazy about and the production seems kind of thin at times. Sonically, White Chalk evokes ghostliness and dread far more effectively for me (though I realise the two are very different records).

white chalk is a perfect album to listen to when you're ill.

Destroyer is a case where lots of people say rong things

oh it really really is

I loved Uh Huh Her at the time but now it sounds like she compiled castoffs for the sake of clearing out one phase of her career to begin another (and it looks more like the case now).

I was looking forward to seeing PJ in Manchester on the Is This Desire? tour, but she got laryngitis the day of the show. :/

I then saw her in Chicago two days after 9/11, and she was awesome.

what PJH era did she open for U2 in?

right after stories from the city, i want to say?

ha! weirding U2 fans out in what was probably the least weird phase of her own career

The pj album I actually feel moved to write about is a woman a man walked by - which is both very underrated and also prefigured a lot of let England shake (moreso than white chalk despite the shared sense of brittleness with that album).

spring 2001, yeah

yeah that album even sounds a little u2-y to me. tbf, people didn't seem weirded out at the show i saw.

xxp

tim, please write abuot it!

other opening acts on the tour included stereophonics, garbage, no doubt, nelly furtado, jj72...

not sure people were "weirded out" per se, but more like "lol well this is different i guess!!!!"

yes, write about it! AWAMWB is the only PJH album that means, like...nothing to me. i don't have any antipathy towards it, but i listened to it like twice and never felt compelled to return, which for someone i love as much as PJH is deeply anomalous.

it's ok to just say you don't like something or that it's just not for you without having to come up with some grand reason why it's a failure of an album or what's deficient about it

otm, the lack of recognition of this is wearying. how many billions of words/minutes are wasted on this?

AWAMWB is the only PJH album that means, like...nothing to me. i don't have any antipathy towards it, but i listened to it like twice and never felt compelled to return, which for someone i love as much as PJH is deeply anomalous.

Same here, I liked it more than I liked Uh Huh Her or 4 Track Demos but I can't really think of anything to say about it so yeah I'd be interested to read Tim's take.

LES and kaputt both got 8.8 BNM on p4k o_O

also LES was #4 on p4k countdown to kaputt's #2, which isn't that huge of a difference. i don't understand how kaputt ends up being so much more lauded but p4k than LES. aside from the fact that you know destroyer and p4k are both indie fuxx

lauded by*

well it's pretty obvious iatee hasn't actually listened to it, and it's also obvious passim that he's a div, so why bother w/him

Have you listened to Kaputt yet?

23 pj harvey news stories in 2011 on pitchfork, 10 destroyer news stories in 2011

I'm the wrong kind of listener for PJ, I think. I care next to nothing about lyrics, next to nothing about Grand Artistic Concerns in music, and although I'm sort of ashamed of the fact that I do it, I pretty much immediately recoil from any artist who tends to be received in the way she does--that sort of near-unanimous acknowledgement of an album as Important Art. It puts me right off and makes me predisposed to be dismissive.

you know the only reason you can get angry about the mathematical placement w/i a ranking is if the numbers actually have some magic validity, and if they do, then too bad, destroyer is objectively better, I mean look at it, it has a (1) next to it. outside of that these are two albums that lots of people liked a lot.

any artist who tends to be received in the way she does--that sort of near-unanimous acknowledgement of an album as Important Art

lol it was not always such

i mean i think the "1" suggests that destroyer reached more people than pj harvey and therefore was more of a success and we simply have to face those facts.

if you carted over 5 pj harvey fans to ilm in time for the poll, suddenly pj harvey would have the magic (1) in front of her, maybe that should be something people prepare for in advance next time, big cart of pj harvey fans

no shame in coming in second place for PJ, but destroyer was #1, so...

http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/2889/emotcolbert.gif

let england shake is a more p4k album than kaputt and therefore worse.

lol it was not always such

Really? PJ Harvey's first four studio albums were all top 10 on P&J, and critics like Greil Marcus used to speak of her in the same breath as Elvis.

<i>lol it was not always such</i>

You're right... And I used to be put off by her reception as a giantess of Alterna- back in the '90s!

I care next to nothing about lyrics, next to nothing about Grand Artistic Concerns in music,

Clarke, I'm pretty much the same way, which is why I'm often surprised I like PJ as much as I do. But there's also stuff she's done that bores me.

I'd like to sit with her more; plenty of folks on here and elsewhere whose tastes I admire and respect rep for her. It's just hard for me to get past the way she's framed in the discourse (and that's a shortcoming of me as a listener, I freely admit).

PJ HARVEY SIT ON MY FACE

so there aren't any canonical artists you like clarke?

i'm anti-canon as a matter of principle but i find it hard to believe.

not listening to music because its 'in the canon' is the most stupid thing ever. I'd even question how much you like music if you do that. People who do this seem more interested in the theory rather than the actual music.

you're not even interested in the theory of music if you blanket reject canonical music; you are interested in the fashion of music

i was thinking more along the lines of a journalists theory of what music should be but yeah that too

Really? PJ Harvey's first four studio albums were all top 10 on P&J, and critics like Greil Marcus used to speak of her in the same breath as Elvis.

to be fair every greil marcus breath is about elvis

There are tons and tons of canonical artists I like! But they're typically firmly in the past at this point... I'm not so much anti-canon (I actually find it interesting and culturally significant/important the way we create and alter and evolve our various canons) as I am anti- obvious attempts at canon-building. With an album like this that's been out less than a year, it feels like straining to try and force it into a canon so soon. People have barely had time to live with the album and grow with it, you know? I think I dislike when I can see the seams of critical straining to assign importance and lasting value to something so newly created.

We're so terrified of not recognizing a masterpiece when it first gets released that we push really hard in the other direction.

you're not even interested in the theory of music if you blanket reject canonical music; you are interested in the fashion of music

and that's cool, there's a lot of crossover between the two. honestly, i'm a bit of a reactionary myself, and often reject things casually on the basis of where they seem to fit into the culture. but i recognize and try to fight this impulse - while still respecting the fact that i do have a point of view and even a "tribe". it's complicated...

not listening to music because its 'in the canon' is the most stupid thing ever.

I'm actually always motivated to investigate canonized works; this is exactly what I'm NOT tryin to say.

i'm not certain people are trying to canonize anything, they're maybe just doing some rankings and talking about albums they like and consider to be great (LES is one, kaputt even more of one, whether people will talk about LES for example in five years we shall see...)

Lex brought up the canon!