Shame - PJ Harvey

(Source: fuckyeahchickmusicians)

tiemposdeyuca:

PJ Harvey & John Parish - That Was My Veil

civitas:

Catherine - PJ Harvey (live @ the PBS Sessions 1999)

pollykrac:

“…April
All that careful stepping
Rounding of my soul
And now your rain

April
I feel you leaving

I don’t know what silence means
It could mean anything

April
Won’t you answer me
These days just seem to crush me
Hatching, collapsing, tumbling down

April
What if I drown
I drown…”

dimension-7:

PJ Harvey//Dear Darkness (KCRW White Chalk Session) 

(Source: youtube.com)

whirlwind-n-whimsy:

PJ Harvey - Dress

I figure I’d try something the critics like for once. Music ultimately has its roots in personal preference and palette, so I always take what the critics say with a pinch of salt, because they’re ultimately influenced by their own tastes, and if they’re not, they’re deliberately detaching themselves from their own ideas and trying to look objectively at how artistically an album tries to achieve what it’s trying to achieve. Both of which are, in a sense, often quite useless to the casual listener. More often than not I’ll find uneducated, unartistic jackasses who manage to come together and create a few absolutely fabulous albums and ultimately create better music blindly than art-rockers. Why? Because art-rockers often enwrap themselves in pretentiousness and forget about making music engaging as well as clever. 

There’s a debate to be had about accessibility, here. I think it’s fair to ask music to be demanding and intellectual - but I think it’s easy to combine demanding with engaging. Miles Davis’ ‘Tribute to Jack Johnson’ is one of my most-played albums; I love it and constantly return to it - because despite being twenty-minutes long with slow, incremental build-up, the music itself is incredibly engaging and knows exactly how to keep your attention. This makes it substantially better than dim-wit prog rockers who are too self-absorbed in their own abstractions and create music so fragmented and ‘artistic’ that it becomes inaccesible. 

And don’t tell me ‘I don’t understand’. I wrote - and still write - poetry, and went through a huge phase of thinking that poetry had to be as incomprehensible and as thickly layered as possible. Which is silly - if there’s no draw in the first place, and if there’s no accessible key to unlock the piece and the magic there, then there’s no reason for people to bother to dig deeper. Part of the art does involve keeping people’s attention.

And the other part? Moving people. Doing something. Evoking something with your music. A lot of indie-rock might be artsy, but it’s boring as fuck and I’m actually straining to listen to it because it all sounds the same, it all sounded repetitive, it has no bite or no hooks or no interesting elements pulling me in. I’m skeptical of a lot of highly acclaimed indie acts because I fall asleep listening to them.

So where does PJ Harvey come into this? Well, she’s a highly acclaimed indie act (goodness knows why, she’s been around long before all these dumb-fuck folksy/rocksy indie kids). And I absolutely love her. Literally, love at first listen. I am only four songs into Dry and I’d happily buy the entire album just for those four songs. I literally have not liked something this much on first listen for far far far too long.

It is wonderful.

And the best thing? I’ve finally found an artist which I adore which is from my own country and still producing great things today (Yes, I know Let England Shake is nothing like Dry. That’s a good thing).

About the music, then? I love her vocals - I love how skewed, how distinctive, slightly off-key, and slightly-English they are. Quick beat, the percussion pulls you strongly in, the string arrangements and structuring ensure that the sparse, punkish feel of it doesn’t loose itself and become too repetitive. Honestly, that outtro is absolutely spectacular. This continues across the whole of the album, and it never fails to let my attention drop; I’m honestly loving listening to this, and it’s making me smile (modern white indie music, you have redeemed yourself). I suggest listening to a HQ version somewhere else - just doubles in the impact.

(Source: bkork)

eloidobionico:

 PJ Harvey : Is This Desire? (live in 1999 - Sessions @ West 54th)

Is this desire, enough enough, to lift us higher, to lift above?

(Source: youtube.com)

Taut (1998)

restless-things:

choppingdownapalmtree:

She is so charming.

everyone should watch this aw polly i love you

(Source: paradiessiets)