PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016)

Oh wow another Swell fan!

"The Wheel" is great, I'm not sure where people get LES part II from this, at least not musically. It has more in common with "The Sky Lit Up" than anything that was on LES. I'm all for a return to heavier guitars from PJH.

Xp. Ant-semitism in Germany has not been stronger than in the neighbouring countries. But how can a highly civilized country follow a primitive squaller like h.? where did all the culture, the literature, the philosopy etc. go? Sorry i don't want to derail the thread.

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, February 2, 2016 2:42 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sadly not much has been written about hitler's rise to power or WWII, so if PJ Harvey lets us down with this new album, we may never know the answers to these questions

in her mannered recent work

Xposting, but "To Bring You My Love" is imo her most mannered record. I anything, I find that and "Stores" (maybe) her only mannered records, and sort of wish she would make more of them. The rest are either pretty raw or pretty weird and as awesome as they are often undersell her songwriting/playing, especially stuff like "White Chalk," "Is This Desire?" and "Uh Huh Her," not to mention her Parish albums. In fact, LES aside, I never listen to any of her albums but the first two and the two aforementioned "mannered" albums, even though I consider her one of my fave artists of all time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsLqsqbObyg

that break at the end there actually makes it better. i wonder if its on the album like that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/i-gave-a-famous-rock-star-a-windshield-tour-of-dc--and-didnt-know-who-she-was/2016/03/18/8124ab28-e488-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html?postshare=2041458308548680&tid=ss_tw

That dude is my hero:

The father of my daughter’s best friend is Brendan Canty, the drummer for Fugazi, the D.C. hardcore band I knew nothing about until I Googled it. Brendan smiled patiently when I confessed my ignorance. He laughed when I told him I had spent three hours in a car with PJ Harvey without having any clue who she was.

How cool it would be, I thought, to document how my words evolved into her art.

Her manager was enthusiastic about the idea when I first contacted him. Her publicists, too, expressed interest. I asked whether Polly would share her notes with me.

No, a rep later said, and she also wouldn’t give me an interview. But Polly “does love the idea of you writing about your experience that day.”

i live pretty near to benning road. yay?

Surely 99% of the people in America (and a substantial chunk of the people in Britain) could spend three hours in a car with PJ Harvey without having any clue who she was?

I'm kinda hoping Mark Kozelek makes an album about listening to the songs on this album. "I was in my bedroom when i first heard the song "The Community of Hope" and I read the Washington Post story by the guy who drove Polly around and he didn't know who Fugazi was and that was kinda cool and it turns out they didn't build a Walmart there..."

FWIW The Wheel is great and this new one is even better.

Scott that's spot-on current-Koz sentence structure.

xpost

Yeah, both of the new songs are great. Very excited for this album.

Ok I love PJ. I love Mick. But this is one of the dumbest songs of all time. "Ok this is drug town" ?!???? Smh

the backup singers gave me chills

x-post--I guess PJ is quoting that Washington Post guy who drove her around

doesnt make it any less corny! shit man this is like as basic as it gets.

Virtually every PJ Harvey song is in character and this one is as well, she's articulating entry-level prejudices, sounding basic is kind of the point.

lol ok but like the music is basic af too. nothing interesting going on here + cringy bad lyrics. also theres something gross about rich british lady getting driven around a poor black neighborhood and then writing SRS SONG about it. not into it at all. terrible.

I'm with schwitterz on this.

I'd go as far as to say the song's about the driver and not the neighbourhood in an of itself.

she shoulda let me drive her around the east side instead. then the song could've been, "the dopest goodwill is here / and you only get robbed once a year."

(sike I woulda just been fangirling the whole time.)

I have trouble not liking this particular style of basic rock composition. Something nice and airy and unfussy about it.

lol xp

"ok now this is the arby's where james works ... he hooks me up with horsey sauce"

her song about her walk down main street with me yesterday would have been:

"Almost got into a fist fight with a Verizon salesman/The heroin zombies are out in force just like the birds and the first spring flowers/The pork belly taco at the Brass Buckle is insanely good/Fuck the bong store those guys suck/So many ambulances today..."

"and here's the brand new vape store. those guys blow real big clouds."

immediate reaction was pretty much the same as schwitterz' :/

i don't feel the need to love everything by people i love. i don't think i'll be buying this based on what i've heard. but that's okay!

they're gonna put a wal-mart heeeeere

idk i kinda like it. are the lyrics not taken verbatim from this guy's description of dc

so it's not about engaging with dc but engaging with what her randomly-picked driver said about dc? hmm

Yeah surely it's about commonplace attitudes to a place rather than the place, and she maybe got in the car intending to put the driver's words into the song?

This is one of those things where I liked the music before I'd fitted it to the lyrics, I was okay with the lyrics on the page, but together they really jarr. The way she sings Walmart really bugs me.

was it tom green who used to sing on the street and just sing about whoever was walking by? "I'm wearing yellow pants yeah i've got yellow pants on..."

i always liked that bit.

yah and he would put his butt on things and sing it

I feel like there will be some fascinating reviews of this album. So much to say about her methodology and what she's trying to get across. More divisive than LES for sure.

the lyrics deliberately present a series of dislocated, basically meaningless, "drive by" comments about an unfamiliar place. snapshots, quotations, poverty tourism, whatever. the video & backstory draw attention to this, but even without the extratextual support, i think it should be clear to us that the song isn't about the place it describes so much as its own manner of observation and description. i mean, i'm surprised that anyone is criticizing its portaiture. that said, i might have reservations about its use of a real place, real poverty, real people's lives as the backdrop for some sneaky meta-critique. but i suppose that's for people who actually live there to complain about, if they care to.

great song! like the last one too. the weird out-of-step deadness of the backup singers seems deliberate (while I'm making excuses...)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/03/19/communityofhope/

The choir director was just told about the video, and asked to comment:

But Scott wishes their voices accompanied a different vision of Anacostia. “There are so many amazing things in the neighborhood. There is this all-star basketball game they do in Barry Farms. They’re about to build a Busboys and Poets. The Anacostia Arts Center is around the corner from the church,” he says. “There are so many great things and programs in the neighborhood.”

Scott remains confused about the Walmart line. In January, the company backed out of its plan to open a store in Southeast. But why, Scott wonders, does Harvey sing about it like it would’ve been a bad thing?

“A lot of people are disappointed,” Scott says. “Somebody has to build a Walmart. Somebody has to work in a Walmart. A Walmart means jobs.”

and Walmart has always been known for treating their employees well and paying high wages

Walmart treating its employees well is a secondary concern if you're coming from the position of desperately needing a job, any job, to make ends meet.

I hope this thread doesn't become pro-Walmart just out of spite for PJ Harvey...

It's not a pro-Walmart position, it's an "understand how your privilege allows you choices that aren't available to others" position.

True. Nothing wrong with reasonable jobs for people that need them.

A Walmart means jobs for people who desperately need them but it also represents a pretty thin form of "hope". Which might be the point.

doesn't DC have a living wage law? so wal-mart would have to pay higher wages than they usually do.

IMO there's practically no way PJH makes a record 'about' anacostia that isn't cringeworthy, unless she really just gave over her 'voice' to the people who live there, by setting their words to music in a sympathetic manner. otherwise, she can either presume to speak for the residents (hmmmm) or she can endlessly and pointlessly reflect on her position as observer (a disease that highly-educated and sensitive people in positions of privilege are frequently afflicted with).

i also just generally have a negative gut reaction to the whole rat race of british singer-songwriters making 'important' albums 'about stuff.' call it a Bono aversion.

but i like PJH's music a lot so

xp. bono isn't british

right but he's definitely in that cultural milieu