A Beginner’s Guide To PJ Harvey

BoysForSeles

BoysForSeles

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I thought I’d park this here as we have a lovely new forum. Basically during lockdown I was planning to do a sync listen of Polly’s more accessible tunes to the curious uninitiated. However, someone better organised always got in on the slots I had in mind before me or bigger Moopy events took place so I quietly packed my things away and eventually forgot about it (it definitely wasn’t me being disorganised or lazy, really). Anyway rather than waste the playlist which I noticed again earlier today, here is a concise 15 track ,49 minutes career studio album spanning playlist of some of her material. The videos really are worth watching, if anyone is remotely interested!



 
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I’m hit or miss with Polly. Really love To Bring You My Love and Let England Shake, but most of her other albums don’t do a thing for me.
 
VoR said:
I’m hit or miss with Polly. Really love To Bring You My Love and Let England Shake, but most of her other albums don’t do a thing for me.
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Not even Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea?
 
The only PJ abum I couldn't quite crack at first was 'Is This Desire?' but when I went back to it after "Stories..." knocked me for six, I understood it and it's now one of my favourites. I find "Hope 6" a bit dry but watching the film of the making helped it along a bit.
 
octophone said:
The only PJ abum I couldn't quite crack at first was 'Is This Desire?' but when I went back to it after "Stories..." knocked me for six, I understood it and it's now one of my favourites. I find "Hope 6" a bit dry but watching the film of the making helped it along a bit.
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That's interesting because Is This Desire was the first PJ album I actually got into. Of course I was aware of 'Down By the Water' and To Bring You My Love which I quite liked but the first album I ever bought by her was Is This Desire (on CD), and I think it might have been the Q review that propelled me to investigate it.
I remember going for long walks with it on my Discman and just being completely obsessed all the female archetypal characters in it - Catherine, Leah, Joy etc.
Subsequently I investigated her back catalogue and that was the beginning of my relationship with the Queen of Pop.
 
I love all her albums. Even much maligned poor little Uh Huh Her (which on some days may be my favourite).
 
octophone said:
The only PJ abum I couldn't quite crack at first was 'Is This Desire?' but when I went back to it after "Stories..." knocked me for six, I understood it and it's now one of my favourites. I find "Hope 6" a bit dry but watching the film of the making helped it along a bit.
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Strangely enough this was the one I took longest to click with too. I think I was just in a different headspace musically then as I was heavily into clubbing and the dance scene at the time which influenced what I was playing but like you I came back to it and suddenly got it, such a good record.
 
The combination of this thread and the return of our beloved sanctuary has put me in a big PJ mood and right now I'm wailing like a banshee to CAT ON THE WALL
 
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BoysForSeles said:
Strangely enough this was the one I took longest to click with too. I think I was just in a different headspace musically then as I was heavily into clubbing and the dance scene at the time which influenced what I was playing but like you I came back to it and suddenly got it, such a good record.
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I was ankle deep in a heavy avant-garde thing at the time so you'd have thought it would have flowed into me pretty well. It was just one of those albums, as it turns out; met with a level of bewilderment at the time but subsequently, we all catch up. It certainly served notice that she wasn't going to crowd-please.
 
I'll pick up the pieces
And carry on somehow
Tape the broken parts together
Limp this love around​
 
The White Chalk fashion choices were everything

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I shall try and do this in bits and pieces. Obviously as it’s a beginners’ class some of this will be quite sweeping and general but hopefully will give a semblance of some background. Others are free to throw in what they would like to add.

Track 1 : ‘Dress’ (from the album ‘Dry’ 1992)

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Although it was not the first song Polly put her vocals on record to this was the debut single. The video here is from 2003, I used it as it was a cracking take and because she looks smokin’ in it. ‘Dry’ was the debut album and charted at #11 in the UK on a small indie label. Island were chasing her and apparently there’s a version of the album in their vaults but she kept her word and let the indie label release it. PJ Harvey is actually a trio at this stage but as the name suggests Polly was firmly in the driving seat.

I’d say the record is a coming of age record and represents the self doubt and emotional chaos that can bring. It sounds like an introvert letting it all out and is steeped in folklore, some of the 21 year old her takes on feminism and biblical references. Sound wise I’d say it’s a mesh of melodic indie and alt rock with a dash of the burgeoning grunge scene thrown in.

My personal highlights from this record are ‘Dress’, ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ and ‘Happy and Bleeding’.
 
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Track 2 : ‘Man-Size’ (from the album ‘Rid of Me’ 1993)

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The second and final album as a trio. This charted at #3 in the UK and featured the first Top 40 single ‘50ft Queenie’. Despite these chart stats this isn’t the album to start with, it displayed a clear disinterest in building a mainstream following on the back of the debut breakthrough.

Polly wrote this album whilst recovering from a breakdown and it shows. The cover looks like the album sounds. It’s often been called the mother of all angry female records but it’s much more than that. Sure, the lyrics AND vocals are often visceral, vengeful and furious but there are plenty of elements of confusion, desperation and longing too. Not a fun for Europe record. Some sample lyrics:

“I'll make you lick my injuries
I'm gonna twist your head off, see
'Til you say don't you wish you never never met her
Don't you don't you wish you never never met her”

“You salty dog, you filthy liar
My heart it aches, I'm in the fire
You snake, I ate a true belief
You're rotten fruit inside of me”

The album was produced by punk rock producer Steve Albini and is stark and abrasive. Kurt Cobain had been writing about Polly a lot in his diaries which didn’t go unnoticed by Courtney Love and Albini says Cobain approached him to produce Nirvana’s ‘In Utero’ based on what he’d heard from ‘Rid of Me’ sessions. I’d never heard anything like this at the time and remains one of my all time faves.

The most quickly accessible tracks on it are ‘Man-Size’ and ‘Dry’. I particularly like ‘Rub Til It Bleeds’ too.
 
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Tracks 3 & 4 ‘C’Mon Billy’ and ‘Down By The Water’ (from the album ‘To Bring You My Love’ 1995)

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It’s 1995. Polly is now officially a solo artist. Island are giving her bigger budgets and she has new top tier management. Maybe half an eye on bigger things after all. The focus results in the album being her first Top 40 album in the US. In the UK it charts at #12 but all three singles (‘Send His Love To Me’ was the third after these two) went Top 40 and her profile does feel bigger.

This era is still steeped in much of her blues rooted sound but there are significant changes and developments to it. There’s a noticeable shift to focus on image and character. We now have flowing hair extensions, false eyelashes, red silk dresses, pink catsuits, bright red lipsticks and heavy eyeshadows. Lyrically there are visits from a roaming killer, a voodoo queen and some infanticide from a child drowning mother.

“That blue eyed girl (That blue eyed girl)
She said "no more" (She said "no more")
That blue eyed girl (That blue eyed girl)
Became blue eyed whore (Big blue eyed whore)”

Musically the canvas is much broader. There’s still the signature guitar, bass and drums but now with added organ, strings, percussion, bells, marimbas… Lyrically common themes of yearning are still there and there is still plenty of menace but there are plenty of quickly penetrable pieces and for the first time there are downtempo tracks, the eerie but lovely ‘To Bring You My Love’, ‘Teclo’ and ‘The Dancer’. The expected PJ “weirdness” is still in play but there’s enough here to show she was going to be in this for the long run and would be continually evolving her sound.

Album tracks to look out for are ‘To Bring You My Love’, ‘Teclo’, ‘Meet Ze Monsta’ and ‘Long Snake Moan’.
 
Iguana said:
I need to give the playlist amount listen once @BoysForSeles has offloaded all his analysis.

But We Float just came on my daily mix and omg it was so good :o
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Tori has actually covered this in the past live, but Polly’s original is pretty much perfect gorgeousness. There’s another album first and then onto the one that is home to ‘We Float’.
 
Tracks 5 & 6 ‘Angelene’ and ‘A Perfect Day, Elise’ (from the album ‘Is This Desire?’ 1998)

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It is 1998 and we are on to ‘Is This Desire?’ The album peaked at #17 on the UK chart and houses Polly’s (still) highest charting single ‘A Perfect Day, Elise’. This record generally seems to be one fans put near the top of their ranks or right down at the bottom.

Born out of trauma and exhaustion the album is another dose of oddness mixed with the magic which produced a record of extremes. Polly was burnt out coming from an extensive ‘To Bring You My Love’ tour straight onto a collaboration with John Parish to make an album as a duo called ‘Dance Hall At Louse Point’. She’d also broke up with Nick Cave and it all affected both her physical and mental health. After writing ‘My Beautiful Leah’ for this album she said it was too tough to be writing these songs and abandoned the project to travel, self care, act and lend her vocals to one off collaborations and eventually came back to finish this record.

The album is another testament that once you press play on a PJ Harvey album you don’t know what you’re going to hear. Storytelling through characters is paramount here. Catherine, Leah, Elise, Angelene, Joy and Dawn all visit, all vessels to express the disappointments and upset from the previous couple of years.

The album was composed on a keyboard rather than guitar for the first time hence many of the tracks feature murky, slow electro beats, loopy drum rhythms and squelchy bass. There are moments of stark beauty too as well as pure noisy energy. Those that criticise the record for being unfocused were just not open to the new musical routes she was exploring.

My favourite album tracks are ‘Is This Desire?’, ‘The River’, ‘No Girl So Sweet’ and ‘The Sky Lit Up’.
 
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I guess I got lucky, got lucky one time :basil:


MTV2 is a big reason I got into these last 2 albums featured, but also because Flood can pretty much do no wrong at this point. I even got Dance Hall at Louse Point, but never gave it much time so don't recall anything besides the Peggy Lee moment. I'll have to go back, but will be paying close attention to the post-Stories recommendations first.
 
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