POLLy Jean Harvey - The PJ Harvey results thread

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

I think he tracked the band there then did the strings somewhere else.

Honestly think that Dry would be a more apt name for Rid of Me. Far too claustrophobic for me in a direct, quasi literal way, it's just not enjoyable 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

i'll measure time
i'll measure height
i'll calculate
musical composition substance

i sort of agree with all the defences of ROM - i don't dislike it or anything, it certainly doesn't elicit even minor eyerolls in the way Stories does - but it's the "preferring it to any of her other albums" thing that is just like wtffffffffff have you even listened to TBYML or ITD

It's third after those for me.

I listened to Stories again for this poll and man aside from tracks 2 through 4 is that album ever rmde

"this is love" and "this wicked tongue" are the only stories standouts for me - "good fortune" is pleasant but not very exciting, "a place called home" is pleasant but basically "good fortune" redux

"big exit" absolutely slays live though

Anyone who would rank that ahead of anything else in her discography (inc. the John Parish albums) needs their head examined.

seriously, her worst album by such a long way

otm!!!!
she doesn't really want you to lick her legs, she just wants to say "lick my legs" because it's fun

Totally OTM, I sometimes imagine ROM (the album) as something she wrote just to screw with guys' heads, IOW, if a girl sang you these songs you'd probably shit yourself with fear and/or nervousness and that's the whole point of it all.

My top five albums were exactly the same as the poll results (in the same order too) except with "Stories" in place of ITD. I loved ITD when it came out but have cooled on it a lot over the years.

I will stan for "You Said Something" and "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" until the end of time, especially the latter, because she hasn't shown that kind of fire on record since.

You haven't heard A Woman A Man Walked By, then?

Stories is my #2, I've got fond memories attached to it but really I just love that guitar sound, I can't even think of any other records from around that time with the same sort of production. (FWIW I only got into PJ when a friend played me Is This Desire? so this was only the second of her albums I'd heard). UHH is definitely my least-favourite but even that's a minor mis-step.

Rid of Me wasn't in my Top 5 but I can understand people who prefer Rocking PJ picking it as their favourite.

Uh Huh Her isn't a very good record but it's a fascinating one in terms of her artistic path. It sounds totally like a sketchbook - confused, scrappy, sometimes falling back on old tricks but then, on Desperate Kingdom of Love for example, nailing her new direction. I hear that song and I'm like, oh hello White Chalk & Let England Shake.

Share Lex's lack of enthusiasm about Rid of Me. I thought Is This Desire? would be her Erotica (which it kind of is) and place in the top 3.

My beef with all ILX polls is that the early stuff is always overrated and the later work underrated, even with a career as interesting as PJ's. I'm not sure if that's to do with the lasting intensity of youthful fandom, or the impact of hearing an artist for the first time, but results often (huge generalisation here) confirm the cliche that it's all downhill after your first decade.

I listened to Stories again for this poll and man aside from tracks 2 through 4 is that album ever rmde

Yeah. Has she ever recorded a string of tunes as inert as "Good Fortune" and "A Place Called Home" and sequenced them consecutively? Ick.

I think "A Place Called Home" is incredible. I remember getting the advance of the album and listening to that track five times in a row on my DIscman on the train. Different strokes, etc. People who hate on this record are as perplexing to me as people who think "White Chalk" is her best.

yikes, 20 years

anyone else see the tour where Tricky opened?