POLLy Jean Harvey - The PJ Harvey results thread

Chronologically? Eighteen years *is* a long time. Johnny Cash?

Let England Shake has the worst cover out of all of these I think. Or second-worst to Uh Huh Her.

i never understood why "rid of me" was supposed to be her token album. for me it represents a huge drop of quality after "dry". there is something cartoonish in the music. all the seemingly more experimentalish character of "rid of me" never conviced me. the songs are lesser songs, the title song is ok but can hardly compete with any of the songs of "dry". can someone try to explain?

Nope

Just let the rollout happen. I sure there will be plenty of chances for people to expand on why songs from Rid of Me are so facemelting awesome.

The songs are far better, as a cohesive statement it's a real work-of-art, the power of it is uncompromising and awesome. Which is not to say I like it (well, I do, but I don't love it) but as a *thing* it is uberimpressive.

It's like George Foreman's fist

that doesn't make sense to me. if you don't love it why the hell did you make it no. 1? in music impressive doesn't mean shit without a personal connection.

you can dance around george foremn's fist you know. muhammad ali did it.

actually ali didn't

ok he had a different winning strategy against foreman i forgot but that still doesn't explain anything.

indeed

I love it and I didn't even vote for albums! Some of the reasons that I love it are personal/biographical and I'm not all that interested in sharing those; the other reasons are related to the general amount of audacity it took to make a record like Rid of Me, then and now. The sensation of listening to it when I was 18-19 years old was unforgettable. You can't look at the cover and tell me that there's not a special record in there.

what the fuck at these results???

i don't think i've ever thought of Rid Of Me as essential - everything about that aesthetic was improved on 4-Track Demos. the production is absolutely horrible. i don't hate it because as ever, it has the songs - and i think i'd go for the ROM version of "50ft Queenie", certainly - but i can't have listened to it front-to-back more than 3 or 4 times in my life (i first heard it in 1995 i guess).

had been hoping Is This Desire would be the surprise ILM-ish #1 - surprised to see it so low. oh well i'll always have the joy of knowing that PJH herself agrees with me.

Uh Huh Her is maybe a minor work but i'll rep hard for it - when it's bad it's rote, but when it's good it's as incredible as peak PJH. i sort of feel its minor status makes it more interesting, somehow, and i'll ALWAYS appreciate its timing - to follow SFTCSFTS with that is kinda why i love PJH as an artist.

sad for Dance Hall, although i guess i didn't expect it to do well - i'm really surprised PJH fans in the '90s would just ignore it. it was the first PJH release after i became a fan, i remember being HYPED.

i find dry a tremendously accomplished debut, but in the end an, uh, dry run for rid of me. the latter is monumental, has great songs, and is menacing as hell (which i appreciate a lot).

it is also pure sex.

i can understand why she changed tack -- she could hardly have taken rid of me any further -- and i love nearly everything she's done. i don't find her more recent stuff as singular or striking, that's all.

i remember being put off by the production when i first heard it, but i came around. it's totally fitting, at any rate

i know ALOT of ppl who basically wrote her off once 'pj harvey' ceased to be the name of the band

she feels so BURIED in Rid Of Me, 4-Track Demos she's just out in front screeching as she should have been all along

i think i agree w/ lex, rid of me has kind of an oppressive sound, really hard to listen all the way through. used to love it but probably would take any of the others before that one.

oppressive is the point

lol at ppl being mystified that an intense rock artist's most intense rock album might prove to be her most popular

have a hunch that 'fool in the rain' didn't win the zeppelin poll either

i don't think ROM is as emotionally intense as ITD or White Chalk (or 4TD!) by a long way

sounds like a poll

lol who's talking emotions

The 5-4 were my 1-2. I bought Dry when it came out without having heard anything off of it, I think I'd read about her somewhere and I liked the cover. Was completely hooked from the opening bars of "Oh My Lover." I prefer its lo-fi spaciousness to Rid of Me's lo-fi assault, but I understand why Rid of Me is the monument.

Is This Desire is, to me, the closest of her albums to Dry in its range and unpredictability.

(the closest of her albums that I have actually listened to -- of the bottom half of the poll, I only have Stories and 4-Track, and I've probably only listened to Stories about twice.)

Airline Guitar -- thanks, gents

I also agree that 4-Track demos is far more affecting than ROM, might even be tuff for it to make my top 10.

Just outta curiosity, is Water a big fave? I love her voice on that song.

i mean 'one more try' by timmy t is more "emotionally intense" than '1969' by the stooges

"Water" is awesome but did not make my ballot... (two other water-themed songs did)

ROM's emotional intensity is misunderstood - it's mixed in with gigantic smirks and fuck yous in a way some of her other records aren't. It's thrillingly confident and self-referential and playful. I never understood it as being anguished at all, even if it messes with ideas of anguished women in order to make very loud noises. It's just wildly expressive: nobody else can do this and I can.

otm!!!!
she doesn't really want you to lick her legs, she just wants to say "lick my legs" because it's fun
i never thought she was being earnest about anything in that album -- what a fucking relief! everyone was so earnest in the early 90s.

what she was doing was (and is) way more challenging than being emotionally intense, imo

Rid Of Me was number 3 for me but I love it, esp. for its compressed carnal lurch, the way on a tune like "Missed" it feels like all this heaviness is squeezed into such a small space.

She went more widescreen forever thereafter which worked wonders as well* but Rid of Me is like being hit in the stomach with a ball bearing and I adore it.

*Even so many of my favourite moments post-ROM are ones which approach its qualities by different means - you could never mistake "Long Snake Moan" or "A Perfect Day, Elise" for ROM songs but in their own ways they recapture that sense of a mountain of energy being held within a very confined space (the space is more surround-sound though).

In a separate development, this poll process got me into White Chalk and I'm obsessed with it now.

Agree that Rid of Me is a very funny album as well.

everything about that aesthetic was improved on 4-Track Demos.

Not without Rob Ellis it wasn't.

Yeah the drumming on Rid of Me (and Dry too) is flat out amazing. I've actually listened to 4-Track Demos for the first time in the past few days and the performances are awesome but it misses Ellis going nutzoid on the drums.

Relistening to "Rub It Till It Bleeds" last weekend made me queasy like In Utero never did.

I love 4-Track, but yeah, Ellis was the first "rock" drummer I'd heard in years where I was like, "Waitwaitwait...WHAT the fuck did you just do?!"

xp

i never understood why "rid of me" was supposed to be her token album. for me it represents a huge drop of quality after "dry". there is something cartoonish in the music. all the seemingly more experimentalish character of "rid of me" never conviced me. the songs are lesser songs, the title song is ok but can hardly compete with any of the songs of "dry". can someone try to explain?

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Wednesday, April 24, 2013 3:23 PM (2 hours ago)

i and others responded to these questions upthread. in the end, the only thing wrong with the album is that you don't feel it. your criticisms are all just value judgments. that's fine, but you have to assume that others feel differently, right? the experimentation feels natural. it convinces me. the songs are great. the title track towers over most (but not all) of dry.

i love the unhinged, carnal exultation. eyeball kicks otm about the stance: "it's just wildly expressive: nobody else can do this and I can." i love that, the sense of this furious, ecstatic wind blowing through her. it is emotionally intense, but it's also joyful, smirky and playful. the sound of an artist completely mastering her material and identity and just letting it ROAR.

the production is absolutely horrible.

omg no, no, no.

i didn't get to vote in this because someone tried to blow up my city the week i was supposed to listen to pj harvey, but i did get to listen to rid of me today. in many regards it's a tough record to listen to, half the songs are barely even written beyond a riff and an amazing vocal performance. but if there's a better sounding 90s rock record you can please let me know what it is, thx.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hYO4FtX4qA#!

Man, I'm trying to find some Albini-interviews-Polly piece from the time. I've noticed that of all the high profile stuff he's done, I don't think I've ever heard Albini say a single bad thing about her or working on "Rid of Me."

i think he just said that she was weird and ate potatoes the whole time

BTW, watch that clip til the end to see her light Albini's feet on fire!

i appreciated albini mentioning that ___ was the only patch peej allowed on her voice

sometimes ppl act like dude runs roughshod over bands, but he's there to record the sounds they want, and obvs pj knew what she wanted

rid of me sounds like a million other albini recordings, it has its quirks but it sounds really fuckin' good

More bands should just track their drums with Albini. I think Trent Reznor did that once, recorded a bunch of drums there and then brought the tapes to another studio. If you're a drummer, you're going to sound good. Everyone else, singers, guitarists. you have to pay attention or he'll just make you sound thin or shitty. He seemed particularly well suited to PJ Harvey at the time. But then, she went from him to a long relationship with Flood, who at one point was the last producer I'd think was well suited to PJ Harvey.

gedge did something like that with him on the latter two cinerama albums iirc