PJ Harvey : Classic or Dud

I kinda felt like she was co-opted by the Guardian readership and leaned into the “high culture icon” thing. I’ve loved her work since Dry but I didn’t go see her when she came to town about 10 years ago, the promo image showed her with black feathers in her hair playing an autoharp and I thought you know what, no thanks.

I mean, she already made two power-trio records. We can still listen to those if we want. While I haven’t loved everything she’s done since (though I do love most of it), it’s extremely fascinating and exciting to see how/that she keeps challenging herself and her audience.

It’s not the challenging aspect I object to, it’s just that the records haven’t been very good. I found things to enjoy on Let England Shake (“Hanging in the Wire” is incredible) but the concept took over from the art too regularly. Hope Six just felt like preachy homework, (as well described above). On the other hand I love the experimentation on Desire and it’s my equal favourite with Rid of Me.

It’s similar to my problem with Nick Cave - when an artist becomes aware of their cultural status, some assume the mantle and it’s fatal for their work. PJH is far greater than Cave so I have hope she will dig out.

She became a little like post-New York Lou Reed, without the vulgarity to be able to pull out a "Sex With Your Parents" every once in a while.

xps I think I meant “In the Dark Places”, it’s been a while since I listened to it.

In The Dark Places is amazing, yes

idk if pj harvey who has released only one kinda retready album (hope six) (uh huh her is mad underrated and misunderstood) merits this discourse, new song feels like she’s resumed fearlessly pushing forward, speaking of i’d sooner compare her to bowie than reed or cave

obv anyone can feel however they like but we might not get an artist like her ever again so my receptors are set on appreciating what we have

otm. I'm surprised by some of the sourness here. two different accusations of "homework" 🤔

I don't think either of those takes are wrong at all, but at the same time I wouldn't want to overstate her value/talents. For example, I would not really consider her fearless or a radical Bowie-like reinventor, just a songwriter who sometimes struggles with what to say and how to say it. Like I said, she's released at least two, maybe three, of my favorite albums of all time, which is more than most acts, but she's also released a lot of stuff I find kind of boring. Granted, boring on her own terms, and not really boring in a "bad" way, just boring in a way that doesn't really click with me. That's of course personal taste (or lack thereof!).

If she were a minor/lesser talent, she'd keep releasing albums in one mode for eternity.

Yeah, I dunno. What was that (apocryphal?) Peter Buck quote about being able to write songs like "Driver 8" in his sleep?

Anyway, the reason I value her as a major talent, even though she makes a lot of music that does not move me, is that it would not shock me in the least if she released an album in the future that I would add to my list of all-time faves.

I don’t think any of us are arguing that she’s anything less than a stellar talent. I’ve considered her in the top rank of, well, anyone in music since her debut. It hurts to not enjoy what she’s doing. I hope to again. And like Bowie, when I don’t enjoy the work I kinda assume it’s me, not her.

It's not always you

https://media.tenor.com/SowoYaZKAW8AAAAd/david-bowie-mick-jagger.gif

idk she's only made one real misstep at this point with hope six

i would welcome a return to something more directly in the lineage of her 90s work of course, that's still her best period, but i don't think she'd have to repeat herself or anything to do that

the new track is a weird single choice, not particularly compelling on its own but could work better in the context of the album

Nobody who cares about her should sleep on the '96 and '09 records credited to she and Parrish… indeed Hope Six is the only mediocre record she has made…that tour is the only time I ever seen her, and it was at Terminal 5, the most intolerable large venue in NYC…

I have to say, despite Hope Six the album being mediocre, the tour behind it was great -- saw two shows, a huge 10-piece band with two drummers and a bunch of saxes playing a career-spanning set (heavy on Let England Shake - which I love - but also featuring some 90s favourites); they were incredible.

I loved Dance Hall at Louse Point, probably in my top 3 of her records, and was very pleased she played a number of songs from it when I saw her in 1998. A Woman a Man Walked By is the only one of her albums I haven't heard, it seemed to come and go with little fanfare.

With PJ back in the limelight YouTube randomly reminded me of this UHH-era live Slim Harpo / Stones cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzApY1nCcSk

She also used to do The Fall's "Janet + Johnny" back in 2004:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LLg0FhUTeRI

If I'm not mistaken both recordings are from a semi-acoustic gig she did at Royal Court Theatre in England at the end of that tour.

Hope Six is underrated (just ignore the lyrics!) and I agree the live show for it was great (....but the most memorable part was the rush when "50 Ft. Queenie" started; I think how outrageously good she was in the 90s overshadows her current stuff which suffers from the comparison).

This thread inspired me to revisit A Woman Walked By. At the time(s) I didn’t care about these John Parish collaboration records - I was RONG. Great stuff.

Ooh a lot of interesting takes here. I have to say I actually liked Hope Six.

'been waiting for thirty years for pj harvey to rock out again, wonder if it’s ever gonna happen'

She's in her avant garde folk phase right now, so probably not, or at least not the way she used to in the 90s/early aughts. One can hope, though.

"I mean, she already made two power-trio records. We can still listen to those if we want. While I haven’t loved everything she’s done since (though I do love most of it), it’s extremely fascinating and exciting to see how/that she keeps challenging herself and her audience."

Agreed! I don't see the Bowie parallel (Maybe because Polly's transition from one sound to next hasn't been that drastic) but I feel similarly insomuch that I didn't love everything he did either; he's a genius but my personal feelings are that everything he did was either a swing or a miss. Still I feel there's merit in the ways she refuses to do the same things over and over.

Just got tickets for the second night in Glasgow.

I love ‘A Child’s Question, August’ of the two songs released so far.

There was a play-through of the full album alongside an interview on French radio and I really enjoyed what I heard. Bits and pieces reminded me of different PJH eras, e.g. hazy soundscapes (analogue synths, field recordings) brought to mind Is This Desire B-sides, some ghostlike vocals nodded to White Chalk, and folk-rock elements seemed to be a natural progression from what she did on Let England Shake (musically, not lyrically — although no saxophone or autoharp this time around), but overall the whole thing is very much its own weird beast. Definitely won’t lure back the crowd that lost interest when she stopped rocking out but it had so many gorgeous, moving and slightly bizzare moments sprinkled throughout that I can already see myself returning to it more often than to Hope Six — thankfully the self-important quality of that record is gone.

Seems to have a very ‘live’/rehearsal/warts-and-all quality, too, aparently a lot of the recordings were first takes, sometimes half-improvised. Can’t wait to listen to it properly in good quality.

I’m sure the lyrics will be puzzling to people who have not read the book, though — the poems chosen for the songs don’t really construct a narrative when taken out of context, more of an obscure vibe. Plenty of dialect vocabulary, lots of recurring motifs, especially references to death and Elvis. And femboys! Lol

from that description, aoty

Thank you! I’m intrigued.

Despite reservations I’m ready for this to be great, I mean she is a fucking genius

New profile in the Guardian by Laura Snapes:

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2023/jul/01/pj-harvey-interview-i-inside-the-old-year-dying

this is probably her weirdest album, quite minimal and atmospheric. it's closest to is this desire (the quieter bits for the most part) and let england shake (though with the autoharp replaced by pastoral fingerpicked guitar). it's quite a nice mix of sounds, but there's often not that much to the songs themselves, a lot tend to just stay in one place (though there are impressive exceptions)

the lyrics are largely impenetrable (them being significantly in an obscure english dialect certainly doesn't help) but what i can make out seems to have a significant focus on elvis-as-christ and gender. was taken aback by her singing of 'femboys in the forest'

i don't think this is going to be one of my favourite of her albums or anything but it'll probably grow on me a fair bit and just giving a taste of 'what if if this desire didn't have such a flat mix' is enough to make me relatively fond of it

the general vibe of it reminds me of third a fair bit actually? certainly not as bleak or as haunted but there's a similarity

Ann Powers interviews her: https://www.npr.org/2023/07/06/1185749989/pj-harvey-i-inside-the-old-year-dying-orlam-interview

If you don't have a physical copy (or have not read Orlam), the official website has annotations to the lyrics that make them easier to parse:

https://pjharvey.net/lyrics/?release=i-inside-the-old-year-dying

god the enormous harrowing world that opens up and beckons you into it when you start this record

After one listen, I feel like I need to listen to it further - a good sign.

I'm loving it. It sounds like her again.

Got my CD today but not listened yet.

Hmmm, interesting but not a lot of fun to listen to? For me anyway.

idk is white chalk fun to listen to? the new one feels like it sits next to that one more than anything imo. the songs certainly have been creeping into me slowly like some kind of mold. and i think there's audible wonder in the realm harvey/parish/flood are creating with the wispiest gestures

a fragmented account of things that seem intimately woven into each other (e.g. the recurrence of figures like "wyman-elvis" and the repeated interpolations/inversions of "love me tender"). songs can be static as a photograph or mutant as the ground of a swamp. like sifting through the damaged remains of something long after its ended, but also finding something eternal in it, something that's being repeated over and over again behind the skin of reality, like a heartbeat

off topic I got the Peel Sessions comp on that Sound of Vinyl sale and wow, what an amazing document

It's a more compelling listen than White Chalk, which at the time I tagged as the first chapter in a phase we wouldn't see -- until now: skeletal by design, testing her vocal range. The lyric sheet looks like transcribed Geoffrey Hill poems, and her own lyrics have his curiosity about English myths and folklore.

xp me too! I am perhaps driving my family crazy with the frequency of wang dang doodles.

i think the first and last tracks are the best

Brad nails the feeling.

thank u raymond (fyi i'm going by "ivy" now, prob one day soon i'll appear with a different username)

the new yorker interview is v good.

let england shake had been the first thing id liked of hers for a while, a long while. and hope 6 left me cold. but this album is really working its way into me. at first i felt the music was a little weak - just a sort of funereal pattering and chiming - the field recordings, the interleaving of themes and phrases, her voice of course, create the feeling of a whole work - almost a song cycle (listening to Abrahamsen’s Let Me Tell You cycle of songs comprising only words used by Ophelia in Hamlet, from Paul Griffiths’ novel of the same name, is the closest recent listening experience i’ve had). i’m still circling around it, still a bit hesitating and uncertain - the slightness of it - but it feels pretty magical to me. a scrap of something in the wind caught on barbed wire on a country walk.

i think it was the nether edge that first switched me on to the album.

She was every bit as good as I'd hoped and expected at the recent live show (I went to the second night in Glasgow).

Given that, I'm more than a little tempted by the London show that's just been announced for next year at Gunnersbury Park. What's that like as a venue, if anyone has been? I also only know Big Thief from the others on the bill, in case there's anything in particular I should check out to aid decision making.

PJ Harvey announces her only London summer performance of 2024 at Gunnersbury Park, a Grade II listed parkland venue within walking distance of Acton Town and Ealing Broadway, on Sunday 18th August 2024.

PJ Harvey says, “I’m grateful to Gunnersbury Park for inviting me to curate this event. I have chosen what I feel to be some of the most exciting artists working today. With them I hope to be able to give the audience an emotional, heartening and uplifting experience.”

The line-up includes special guests Big Thief, Tirzah, and Shida Shahabi.

Saw her last month and all I can say is her current show is insanely good—perhaps not surprisingly, I have never seen her be anything less than stellar live, but she still exceeded my expectations. She had a small four-person backing band featuring John Parish and James Johnston from Gallon Drunk/Bad Seeds and a pretty simple but theatrical staging (old furniture scattered all over lol). The first half focused just on I Inside the Old Year Dying performed from the beginning to the end (and boy how this album comes alive in concert!) and then the second hour was pretty much a back catalogue dive, from Let England Shake through favs from Is This Desire (“The Garden”!) and To Bring You My Love to early work like "Man-Size" or "Dress". Vocally impeccable and she hasn’t lost an ounce of her charisma.

And yes, she’s doing festivals/open air shows in Europe next year and then a tour of the US in the fall—don’t miss!