Patti Smith vs. PJ Harvey

I swear to god, if I have to sit through another trailer for Dream Of Life...

Patti's self-mythologizing is such a constant irritation that I'm happy if I never have to hear any of her albums again. No wonder she was hanging out with Stipe for awhile. Sure, Gone Again has its moments, but her post-1980 work is mostly dire. How many reviews include "her best work in years"?

I still look forward to whatever P J Harvey is doing.

Honestly, it's hard for me to imagine these two women in the same room. This poll cracks me up. Silly ILM!

― Glow In The Dark (Bimble), Thursday, January 29, 2009 12:37 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Really? The stylistic similarities are enormous, I think, particularly when it comes to the timbre of their voices, and a good deal of the phrasing. I like them both, but I like PJ Harvey's songs better. Also, her cover of "Shot of Love" rules.

comparison is apt I feel but oldsters are gonna wanna resist because of their ongoing delusion that punk was super-special and not largely a marketing pheomenon

still voted smith because nothing in harvey's catalog rocks as hard as radio ethiopia (nb yes nerds I know she's got plenty that's as loud as radio ethiopia & as occasionally grating but not one song in it really smashes face like "pumping (my heart)"

If I voted for either I'd feel I were betraying the other. First ILM poll I've bottled completely.

comparison is apt I feel but oldsters are gonna wanna resist because of their ongoing delusion that punk was super-special and not largely a marketing pheomenon

A marketing phenomenon? A zillion independent labels sprung up in the wake of punk and you call that a marketing phenomenon? John, I know you're smarter than that. Stop trying to wind me up.

Really? The stylistic similarities are enormous, I think, particularly when it comes to the timbre of their voices, and a good deal of the phrasing.

Oh great god of bullshit in a cowpen, hell no. Their voices are quite different. I don't want to even get into lyrics. Have you even heard the best of PJ Harvey? Let's go back in reverse to the first to albums, please, as fandango has figured out:

Peej peaked pretty early too though, if you're one of the folk (like me) who find everything after the first two albums to be in a different (lesser) league really...

― fandango, Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:53 AM (4 days ago) Bookmark

Look, I'm saying all this with a far more tolerant ear for Patti Smith than say, Alex in NYC, and I know she had a few really good songs (I could put together a nice top 5, probably), but really...PJ has gone places Patti never went and I find Smith's nasal whine and poetic pretension grating at times.

Also cheers to velko for the "Patti Smyth vs. Paul Harvey" post, that was funny and much appreciated. (btw I actually just happened to hear Scandal's "The Warrior" at a club last Saturday LOL)

these two individuals are both women, who first names start with P. i've never really gotten the endless comparisons (which I believe kind of stopped after the mastery of Is This Desire? anyway)

oh and Polly Jean can write circles around Patti from the perspective of either gender, in 3D characters from the 1700s to the present day...but i thought that was obvious. ie, there's a lot more than "rocking hard" that she can do well - and better - than her pseudo-predecessor that seemed-to-also-have-a-vagina-and-played-geetar-loudly-thats-why-they-were-always-compared-yes?

i've never really gotten the endless comparisons (which I believe kind of stopped after the mastery of Is This Desire? anyway)

Really? Stories from the City always sounded massively in debt to Patti to me.

Anyhow, first three Patti Smith albums are gold. Not a massive fan of Wave, but it has it's moments. Although my favourite Patti is noisy Patti, I do quite like the pop makeover that Todd Rundgren gave some of those songs. Still not heard The Coral Sea with Kevin Shields, but would probably pick that up sooner than the next PJ.

Also, Patti's political activism >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> PJ's defence of fox hunting.

That said, I've just pressed the wrong fucking button and voted for Polly by mistake. Bollocks.

I think it is pretending to say there is no connection or relationship between the two artists. Over the 15 years between their debuts, there weren't so many women working in and finding critical and commercial success in that kind of aggressive guitar oriented poetic rock music that I can say they are a dime a dozen and not worth noting the similarities.

My own taste is towards Patti Smith. I don't have any argument against someone who picks PJ Harvey.

Patti's political activism

Rallies for Ralph Nader? Platitudes like "Power to the People?" Some benefit concerts for trendy Western-fied Buddhism/Tibet?

Wait, I think I mean "People Have the Power."

Either way, both of those People/Power songs suck.

it's easily PJ Harvey ffs.

i did not know that peej had come out in favour of fox hunting. tbh i couldn't give a flying fuck about the issue and the ban has always struck me as gesture politics, pandering to the delusional fuckwits who still reckon labour is a party of the left.

http://www.nme.com/news/pj-harvey/561

^^ ok this is hilar for the amazingly patronizing/wrong quotes from the activists on either side. good girl, polly!

Dry (1992) 9
Rid of Me (1993) 7
4-Track Demos (1993) 8
To Bring You My Love (1995) 9
Dance Hall at Louse Point (with John Parish) (1996) 6
Is This Desire? (1998) 7
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000) 9
Uh Huh Her (2004) 4
The Peel Sessions 1991-2004 (2006) not heard
White Chalk (2007) not heard
A Woman A Man Walked By (with John Parish) (2009) not heard

Studio albums
Horses (1975) 10
Radio Ethiopia (1976) 7
Easter (1978) 7
Wave (1979) 5
Dream of Life (1988) 3
Gone Again (1996) not heard
Peace and Noise (1997) 5
Gung Ho (2000) not heard
Trampin' (2004) not heard
Twelve (2007) 4

On the basis of total scores, Polly. Out of devotion to "Horses", Patti.

Lolz @ this thread; hippies and fox hunting. Free Money, off Horses, is my fave Patti track and one of my all time fave songs. Probably one the songs of Patti's (of the ones that I've heard) that reminds me of PJs stuff (sonically/delivery-wise). End of the day though, I can pick up any PJ album any time and put it on an enjoy it, unlike Patti.

PJ Harvey's enormous B-sides collection is awesome.

kids these days

OTM.

They both peaked really early in their career (Patti actually before her debut, with "Hey Joe"/"Piss Factory," and then every album she put out was a step down from the one before), but Patti peaked a lot higher than PJ -- Dry is what, about as good as Wave, maybe? Nah, nothing as good as "Frederick" or the Byrds cover or maybe "Dancing Barefoot" on it. But close, probably. (And yeah, Patti's later stuff has been pretty embarrassing, but never as bad as that ridiculous song about "little fishies," for fuck's sake.)

Hang on to those opinions, gramps.

Anyway I agree with xhuxk about Smith up to a point (i.e. the higher peak and fall part) but completely disagree about Harvey who I find pretty consistent. I can pick up just about every Harvey album and enjoy it.

ongoing delusion that punk was super-special and not largely a marketing pheomenon

Why couldn't it be both? (And I say that as somebody who mostly thinks punk made rock worse.)

PJ

I distinctly remember the horror I felt when I picked up a copy of Gung Ho, pushed play, and heard Patti warble "In the garden of consciousness..." What a horrible start!

Still not heard The Coral Sea with Kevin Shields, but would probably pick that up sooner than the next PJ.

Yeah, but how much quicker would you pick it up a PJ/Kev collab over the latest Patti joint?

And let's be honest, the only time Peej sounds like Patti is on "Good Fortune", from Stories From the City..., so much so that I always assumed it was a tribute/pastiche.

(That was some kind of xpost)

I love this, Mark Lanegan and PJ Harvey duet "Hit the City":

Tom you should definitely check out White Chalk! it didn't really stick with me in the long run but it's definitely the least caricatured/most powerful/most connecting thing she's put out since the first two records. Everything since then (I really need to hear 'at louse point' in full though, I suspect it's way slept on by me) I get far too much artist-ic distance from. Whereas when she was really on fire there was a genuinely scary Hersh-like truth to it, even if she was always sort of a fascinatingly clever poser in her press shot (and she's still never descended to the depths of obvious emptiness someone like Bjork now has) communications....

Still disagree with anyone finding 8 track demos superior to Rid Of Me mind, thought it was a cowardly appeasement gesture back then and still do. Don't like the record 100%? Get a fucking bootleg and feel smug about it you wimps.

A demos album from her entire career would be fantastic though. Stories... is way more in need of unpolishing/unobscuring by appallingly thin-but-not-in-a-good-radio-way-sounding production than anything else.

pj harvey all the way. i only like a couple of tracks on horses (the title track, "gloria").

louse point is excellent, and i'm really hyped for the new album w/john parish - i think '95' through '98 was pretty much pj's creative peak, though i agree re: white chalk being a lot more powerful than you initially think, and i'm definitely still interested in where she goes next.

i grew up on pj and have only heard a bit of patti, so this could be emotional bias, but it definitely seems to me that pj pushed further in more interesting directions, and less self-consciously "important" as patti.

*than patti

I know what you're saying but PJ fans have more than enough "importance" to credit her with to close the gap with Patti though. I guess it's just a case of sticking around sometimes though.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Oooh old people beatdown.

I have never listened to Patti Smith. I love PJ Harvey.

PJ Harvey has yet to write a song as clueless as "Rock 'n' Roll Nigger."

i was listening to easter this week and wondering what would happen if somebody wrote "rock 'n' roll nigger" now. would a major label even release it?

(and i love pj, but patti totally got robbed in this poll.)

i saw both of them live within a few years of each other, in the late '90s. pj was good, but patti was one of the best things i've ever seen (and i wasn't even expecting much from her).

lol 90s

Still disagree with anyone finding 8 track demos superior to Rid Of Me mind, thought it was a cowardly appeasement gesture back then and still do. Don't like the record 100%? Get a fucking bootleg and feel smug about it you wimps.

that's fighting talk danny boy.

I think ROM irritates me because it's the one PJ record that feels compromised by its production. At the time I was disappointed because it was trying too hard to be fashionable - too much Albini, too much of the mute-mute-mute-powerchord!! guitar sound that was then ubiquitous. Listening back to it now, it sounds dated and I think it's the only PJ Harvey album that's very definitely "of its time" .

Releasing the 8-track demos was a canny move IMO - rather than appeasement, it helped create the myth that Rid Of Me was a difficult listen - which cemented PJ's reputation as a "serious. proper. artist." hence we're still talking about her now.

Pj Harvey by miles.

What Ross said