PJ Harvey : Classic or Dud

Wanna feel old? Rid Of Me LP is 25 years old today

Also loved the concert I saw during the White Chalk tour in 2008 -- a solo show with her playing the guitar, piano, keyboards, autoharp and a bunch of other stuff, very stripped down and intimate. She was chatty, often funny and seemed like a lovely, likeable person -- miles away from the well-rehearsed big band theatrics of the Hope Six tour (which I loved, too, albeit for very different reasons). As always incredibly charismatic and intense, locking eyes with audience members while playing.

Hopefully this means a long career

https://variety.com/2018/dirt/real-estalker/pj-harvey-sierra-towers-condo-west-hollywood-1202845331/

That's the flat from the "Who the Fuck" video!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxcCN6BgO_k

The "Dress" demo has dubstep wub-wub bass. A woman ahead of her time.

Getting down to her albs. Dry is such a classic. Rid of me is solid though I don't like that Dylan cover (and they are usually great), and did lol at some of the Slint-era tunings.

A Woman, A Man: John Parish's Favourite PJ Harvey Recordings
^Great stuff

The demo albums she's been putting out recently mostly go to show how fully formed her songs seem to have been from the start. The woman's a genius.

I was dismayed to hear that my equal favourite album of hers, "Is This Desire?", was so traumatic for her to make.
Also found it telling that the Hope Six track wasn't described at all, just the logistics of the recording. She kind of lost me after White Chalk.

Fascinating read! I kind of love it that John is not even mentioning Stories.

I'm both very impressed and slightly disappointed by the TBYML and ITD demos - it's indeed amazing that these songs were pretty much fully developed while she was writing and demoing them at home BUT it makes for a less interesting listen than 4-Track Demos (which were so unlike Rid of Me).

I guess this might change with future volumes of the series - e.g. the LES and THSDP demos apparently were very minimal and the arrangements were developed while jamming the songs live in the studio (or rather church/art gallery) with the band - so they will be probably fairly different from the final versions.

man the second record she did with Parish in 2009? DO NOT sleep on that, matthewk…that is a bit of a bummer that the creation of Is this Desire was so fraught…or is it? Isn't major creativity often fraught?

the Hope Six record is the only record she has ever made that I've actively disliked…but good grief these demo records are indeed staggering… like 80% of what you hear of the finished product of "A Perfect Day Elise," one of my favorite recordings ever, is right there in that demo… and when Parish talks about how there are two phases, the bare bones sessions and the expensive sessions, the latter were to gussy up "elise"…I wager "Catherine," the other one therein that I treasure, is intact from the former sessions…

The demo of "To Bring You My Love" is so menacing

I'm not a huge fan of the glossy production of Stories but the raw demo version of the album is pretty awesome. Such a strong collection of songs; I don't understand why Beefheart told her these were her weakest demos.

The Let England Shake demos are out today and they're the best installment in the series so far IMO.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs_s2IkbGxw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18MpYe9Xwxk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_jdCzt74OCo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgkWxTldY1s

Oh man I hope they announce a b-sides collection please

I need to give that album another chance. I could never get into it - the concept never seemed to translate well into a great musical experience - but I was a big fan of her work and I know plenty of people love Let England Shake. It even got to #2 in the P&J poll, albeit in a weak year.

(I should say, I'm still a big fan of her work, just not of her more recent albums.)

Listening to Rid of Me and its still staggering!

never seen this before:

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

Me neither! Seems like it was just before she made Dry.

Not a bad song but the male frontman has serious ewww vibes

everything is so cheesy til she starts singing! her voice cuts through the cheese, amazing!! 18 year old me loves to see it <3

A new interview in The Observer about her upcoming book (a narrative poem written in the Dorset dialect) offers this exciting tidbit:

She lets slip that she has a new album coming out next year and, although not supposed to be talking about it, allows herself to say: “I’m really pleased with it – and I’m my own harshest critic.”

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2022/apr/24/pj-harvey-poetry-dorset-orlam-interview

https://www.nme.com/news/music/pj-harvey-update-on-new-album-to-be-released-2023-3258356

https://www.nme.com/news/music/listen-to-pj-harveys-haunting-cover-of-leonard-cohens-who-by-fire-3294140

Loving recent Dylan, soundtracks by Sakamoto, and Greenwood and covering Leonard Cohen. Yup sounds like stuff PJ Harvey would like (in a good way)

I was pleased to see a Mica Levi shoutout, they’re a criminally underrated artist for me

i appreciate her shoutout to rough and rowdy ways

i appreciate her

She walked past me on Sunday (away from The Smile's set) at the Nick Cave All Points East in Victoria Park. Last time Nick Cave did one of these, Kylie appeared as a surprise guest, so I was absolutely convinced PJ was gonna come on for Henry Lee - but sadly not.

Her Instagram has been a sea of photos old and new lately.

Argh, I want a b-sides collection!!! Was hoping that would finish off the reissue series.

Nervous about a new album because Hope Six was such a disappointment.

John Parish said in a recent interview that the new album is recorded but not mastered, will be out some time next year, and is closely tied to her new poetry book Orlam (i.e. the song lyrics are poems lifted from the book—which means an album in the Dorset dialect), so we know that at least thematically it will be miles away from Hope Six.

A B-sides and rarities box set coming this month!!!!!!! My finances, already perilous, are screwed, but fuck it, this is a dream come true!

https://www.thegardenforum.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=2858

Already working out the stuff that's missing though... fuck

e.g. Claudine the Inflatable One but loads of others

https://imgur.com/A66bxne

https://i.imgur.com/A66bxne.jpeg

I'll take it though!

Oh man! I don’t even know a lot of these songs, so excited

yeah, buncha stuff on the last two LPs i’ve never heard of. this is exciting!

This is good news but so many demos there vs so many songs (esp from films, TV series) missing.

No Wang Dang Doodle?

Exciting, and yes, I could think of 20 other rarities that should be here, as well as live stuff, covers, guest features etc. but I'm glad at least these are being released in one place. Record 2 and 3 in particular just look like strong, pretty cohesive albums that will warrant repeated listening.

Despite all the amputations, I am so stoked for this. For the most part I’m clueless to her rare tracks and whatnot, so this is a lot of extra PJ for me to absorb.

As someone said upthread and I find myself saying too often these days, I hope there’s a CD version.

Here we go

https://www.treblezine.com/pj-harvey-announces-b-sides-demos-rarities-box-set/

excuse my ignorance, but how much overlap does this have with all the demo records that have come out in the last couple years?

excuse my ignorance, but how much overlap does this have with all the demo records that have come out in the last couple years?

― bulb after bulb

There's no overlap.

The "Missed", "Dry", "Me-Jane" and "Highway 61 Revisited" demos were not included on 4-Track Demos, and the "Cat on the Wall" and "You Come Through" demos were for some reason omitted from Uh Huh Her - Demos.

Everything else is non-album material B-sides, B-side demos, random rarities, etc.

vinyl only then?

xp thanks! amazing (and great) that there's so much still there after the demo records.