PJ Harvey - The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016)

The Hope Six Demolition Project draws from several journeys undertaken by Harvey, who spent time in Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington, D.C. over a four-year period. “When I’m writing a song I visualise the entire scene. I can see the colours, I can tell the time of day, I can sense the mood, I can see the light changing, the shadows moving, everything in that picture. Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about. I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with”, says Harvey.

The album was recorded last year in residency at London’s Somerset House. The exhibition, entitled ‘Recording in Progress’ saw Harvey, her band, producers Flood and John Parish, and engineers working within a purpose-built recording studio behind one-way glass, observed throughout by public audiences.

Watch this new album trailer by Seamus Murphy featuring tracks The Community of Hope and The Wheel here: http://www.vevo.com/watch/GBUV71502053

1. The Community of Hope
2. The Ministry of Defence
3. A Line in the Sand
4. Chain of Keys
5. River Anacostia
6. Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln
7. The Orange Monkey
8. Medicinals
9. The Ministry of Social Affairs
10. The Wheel
11. Dollar, Dollar

she's doing another war album?

haven't watched the "trailer" yet, not going to hear new music in that context thx

"The Communty of Hope" - eh, it's okay
"The Wheel" - okay yes I like this a lot

although honestly I'm more fascinated by the algorithm that put together the artists related to PJ Harvey:

Chelsea Wolfe
Mazzy Star
Massive Attack
Aimee Mann
Bat For Lashes
Bjork
Pulp
Peaches

also that the next video in the play queue was... Michael Bolton

The song in the trailer sounds really good, though I wasn't listening closely to the lyrics.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CZQs3lUWEAEg9Zz.jpg

She’s launching The Hollow of The Hand, a book which pairs her first published poems with the photographs of Seamus Murphy, documenting their 2011-2014 trips to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington DC.

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2015/oct/11/pj-harvey-seamus-murphy-review-hollow-hand-southbank-centre-royal-festival-hall

Some awful cultural tourism in that trailer.

"the wheel" sounds a lot like let england shake. hm

this literally sounds like an out-take from LES

she's always made a point of sounding nothing like her last album and now...

I caught the end of the last single on 6music yesterday afternoon and thought it sounded like a LES outtake with brass. Yay brass, not so much yay it sounding like LES, even though I loved that record.

okay this is far from a final judgment of course but like 5 singles dropped from favourite artists of mine today and everyone else knocked it out of the park and pj did not

what are the other ones?

brandy clark, k michelle, tweet and dawn richard (last one hasn't dropped i just got sent it)

cool thx!

Lex I just want to remind you of your nonplussed initial reaction to Written On The Forehead.

Too many reservations too early I say. Be optimistic.

I'm not crazy about it.

**shrug**

was ready to get defensive about artists who make similar sounding albums in a row, as i don't think it's a demerit, or doesn't have to be. but then I listened to it and... i think it's the backing vocals mainly, dreary sounding on a dreary cadence (they worked ok in LES!)... but it immediately made me feel I'd had a surfeit of this sound in LES and really didn't need any more.

she seems pursuing this more as a political project more than looking to a musical creativity - using a template to explore areas of interest. maybe she feels the palette is appropriate. maybe she feels a change of sound would cause her to lose focus on the subject (changing two aspects at once can have that effect i think). having protest songs in this day in this country feels important, but am going to struggle through if they all sound like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ReW0jJkag8

as someone who loved and adored LES...yeah, i wonder if i need Part II?

First listen I was disappointed by the LES similarities - though it has some kazoo (maybe?) and wilder lead guitar.

Second listen (with the video) - yeah, I like it.

This is great, you people are crazy.

I, for one, need LES Part II

I don't mind this, and suspect it'll be more powerful w/in album context.

And watching this also made me realize I prefer Harvey in this sort of activist/ambassador role more than M.I.A.

I know PJH has always employed a "constructed" persona since the get-go, but I have found less and less to admire in her mannered recent work. It feels like it's done for effect, and for want of a less tired cliché, worthy of Arts Council funding.When I truly loved her work, it always felt like she tapped into something deeper and more visceral - Rid of Me and Is This Desire? are tied for my favourite. Now it feels like respectable indie music for the middle aged, or which I am one, but I distrust being pandered to.

She's older too! Hard to be continuously visceral.

i dunno, if she had kept making variations on Stories From The City i might agree with the "respectable indie music" comment, but that doesn't really seem like the case? i haven't loved everything she's done in the past 10 years, but she's always at least interesting to me.

the second or third time i heard this i started to be like "ok i'm down for another record like les"

i would hardly characterize it as respectable indie music for the middle aged, one of the great things about les is the tension between every element in the mix, how each instrument and vocal and sample seems to come from a different source, almost like different timelines overlapping

let england shake hit me really hard. like, harder than any new record has in a long time (or movie or book for that matter) and i guess i just worry about diluting that feeling with something that feels similar. that makes sense, doesn't it? this is honestly the only new record i have anticipated in years. maybe i have unfair expectations. i salute her no matter what she does! i respect the hell out of her as an artist.

The main thing with PJH - and this happens with tons of artists - is that she switched from mining to her own psyche to mining the world outside of it. These transitions are never seamless.

white chalk and let england shake do make for a nice interior/exterior dichotomy but i feel like she's also done extensive character work, which is of course its own thing, neither internal or external specifically

i don't think it's as straightforward as interior/exterior, LES continued a lot of career-long themes and imagery for PJH. the reason she's been such an interesting artist where a lot of her peers got stuck in the more common holding pattern/rut is because of her explicit insistence on not repeating herself and thus blindsiding fans and critics. LES fit this pattern! so it's startling to hear her not just mining similar themes and concerns but reprising her last album to such an extent.

also "the wheel" isn't half the song of anything on LES

You guys are reading rather a lot into one single.

yeah, she really is more of an album artist isn't she?

Fair enough, Lex.

I know I'm in the minority here, but White Chalk is the last time her music legit hit me like a hammer. LES was very good, but...as much as I respect it I can't quite connect with it on the same level.

"also "the wheel" isn't half the song of anything on LES"

for me its those backing vocals. feel like kind of a tired reprise.

I love that she has switched focus from interior to exterior. Too many (imo) ppl expect women artists to focus on their interiors and/or reward it (and emotional bluntness) over those whose focus is more broad or varies. I love her for writing about all of it. Women writing songs about war: more please!!

I've never gotten the sense that she's "autobiographical"; rather, she uses characters, and To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire are full of them.

yeah but the monologue/descriptions are still all about the inner thoughts of women, focused on the interior and still falling into the category La Lechera is describing; Let England Shake is pretty emphatically more about the description of external events filtered through a perspective rather than a peek behind the mysterious curtain that hides women away from the world

yeah I agree with that

i swear i mean this as a compliment when i say you could base a really cool college course around LES. it's interesting to me on a lot of levels.

certainly Great War poetry

pretty emphatically more about the description of external events filtered through a perspective rather than a peek behind the mysterious curtain that hides women away from the world

exactly -- autobiography and interior narratives are different from each other but they are both more fundamentally different from providing a view of the external world/its workings through a unique lens, and that's what I think she does and I LOVE IT

The last album that floored me was white chalk. I hadn't expected this kind of introspective tour de force from her. The wildness which apparently was never per se or natural was totally gone and suddenly there was this very vulnerable human being. LES was too much of an exercise in political history for me. Too much of a concept album of the very boring kind. I was never really interested in history. To be honest i don't care for it. Especially if it is not the history of my home country which i don't care for too much neither. Only the part which is usually not written about in the history books is interesting. For example the big mystery why millions of germans followed hitler like lemmings.

i'm p sure there are books abt that

suggest ban based on history

the reasons i love LES have little to do with history! funnily enough.

There are books mentioning it of course. But there never has been a reasonable explanation i have heard of.

And what is it then? The music?

While LES has narratives, it's a mistake to call it history in song or an exercise in political history. "Bitter Branches," to take one, has enough fury to suggest all kinds of sources.

There are books mentioning it of course. But there never has been a reasonable explanation i have heard of.

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, February 2, 2016 2:21 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

people tend to do what they're told by authority
it's easier to not intervene than intervene
most ppl didn't know the full extent of what was going on
a lot of germans at the time were p anti-semetic to begin with

demagoguery? i'd listen to a PJH album about that.

yeah, i dunno, i just think it's a really good work of art that goes beyond the subject matter for me. i love the red badge of courage but not because it's a "war novel". kinda like that.

i got mad when simon reynolds posted something on facebook like blimey just what we need another anti-war album and i felt like he was missing something. it goes beyond that! for me anyway. it hits a lot of emotional buttons for me. just vocally alone.

i just think it was a really successful THING. i mean i guess it could have been about a lot of things subject-wise, but she set out to do something and it worked really well. compelling. powerful. well-constructed. if it had been a symphony i would have said wow great symphony!

Xp. Ant-semitism in Germany has not been stronger than in the neighbouring countries. But how can a highly civilized country follow a primitive squaller like h.? where did all the culture, the literature, the philosopy etc. go? Sorry i don't want to derail the thread.

While LES has narratives, it's a mistake to call it history in song or an exercise in political history. "Bitter Branches," to take one, has enough fury to suggest all kinds of sources.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, February 2, 2016 8:23 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yes - it takes the character work PJH was already renowned for and applies it to a situation that's actually familiar to us rather than something strange from her imagination - she approaches getting into the headspace of WW1 soldiers very similarly to how she approaches getting into the headspace of heroines of unwritten gothic victorian novels on ITD?

plus, her pre-LES work is absolutely littered with imagery of war and violence to describe internal/emotional states, or sometimes actual human conflict! i mean LES was not the first time she did the whole journalist-in-war-zone thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6AhTTXmsxlM

so yeah, her work has always had these through-lines, but there's also been a huge shift in perspective each time as well...

wouldn't mind moving to the planet people confused by the success of the nazis live on

I'm also not particularly interested in history, especially war history, but fully agree with Scott here: regardless of specific subject matter, LES just resonates with me on an aesthetic and emotional level.

And what is it then? The music?

I know you basically only like faithful replications of 80s jangly indie, but... of course it's the fucking music.

hahaha

I know you basically only like faithful replications of 80s jangly indie

I count 16 that I'd say were strongly related to jangly 80s indie one way or another.

Oh wow another Swell fan!

"The Wheel" is great, I'm not sure where people get LES part II from this, at least not musically. It has more in common with "The Sky Lit Up" than anything that was on LES. I'm all for a return to heavier guitars from PJH.

Xp. Ant-semitism in Germany has not been stronger than in the neighbouring countries. But how can a highly civilized country follow a primitive squaller like h.? where did all the culture, the literature, the philosopy etc. go? Sorry i don't want to derail the thread.

― it's the distortion, stupid! (alex in mainhattan), Tuesday, February 2, 2016 2:42 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sadly not much has been written about hitler's rise to power or WWII, so if PJ Harvey lets us down with this new album, we may never know the answers to these questions

in her mannered recent work

Xposting, but "To Bring You My Love" is imo her most mannered record. I anything, I find that and "Stores" (maybe) her only mannered records, and sort of wish she would make more of them. The rest are either pretty raw or pretty weird and as awesome as they are often undersell her songwriting/playing, especially stuff like "White Chalk," "Is This Desire?" and "Uh Huh Her," not to mention her Parish albums. In fact, LES aside, I never listen to any of her albums but the first two and the two aforementioned "mannered" albums, even though I consider her one of my fave artists of all time.

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

that break at the end there actually makes it better. i wonder if its on the album like that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/i-gave-a-famous-rock-star-a-windshield-tour-of-dc--and-didnt-know-who-she-was/2016/03/18/8124ab28-e488-11e5-bc08-3e03a5b41910_story.html?postshare=2041458308548680&tid=ss_tw

That dude is my hero:

The father of my daughter’s best friend is Brendan Canty, the drummer for Fugazi, the D.C. hardcore band I knew nothing about until I Googled it. Brendan smiled patiently when I confessed my ignorance. He laughed when I told him I had spent three hours in a car with PJ Harvey without having any clue who she was.

How cool it would be, I thought, to document how my words evolved into her art.

Her manager was enthusiastic about the idea when I first contacted him. Her publicists, too, expressed interest. I asked whether Polly would share her notes with me.

No, a rep later said, and she also wouldn’t give me an interview. But Polly “does love the idea of you writing about your experience that day.”

i live pretty near to benning road. yay?

Surely 99% of the people in America (and a substantial chunk of the people in Britain) could spend three hours in a car with PJ Harvey without having any clue who she was?

I'm kinda hoping Mark Kozelek makes an album about listening to the songs on this album. "I was in my bedroom when i first heard the song "The Community of Hope" and I read the Washington Post story by the guy who drove Polly around and he didn't know who Fugazi was and that was kinda cool and it turns out they didn't build a Walmart there..."

FWIW The Wheel is great and this new one is even better.

Scott that's spot-on current-Koz sentence structure.

xpost

Yeah, both of the new songs are great. Very excited for this album.

Ok I love PJ. I love Mick. But this is one of the dumbest songs of all time. "Ok this is drug town" ?!???? Smh

the backup singers gave me chills

x-post--I guess PJ is quoting that Washington Post guy who drove her around

doesnt make it any less corny! shit man this is like as basic as it gets.

Virtually every PJ Harvey song is in character and this one is as well, she's articulating entry-level prejudices, sounding basic is kind of the point.

lol ok but like the music is basic af too. nothing interesting going on here + cringy bad lyrics. also theres something gross about rich british lady getting driven around a poor black neighborhood and then writing SRS SONG about it. not into it at all. terrible.

I'm with schwitterz on this.

I'd go as far as to say the song's about the driver and not the neighbourhood in an of itself.

she shoulda let me drive her around the east side instead. then the song could've been, "the dopest goodwill is here / and you only get robbed once a year."

(sike I woulda just been fangirling the whole time.)

I have trouble not liking this particular style of basic rock composition. Something nice and airy and unfussy about it.

lol xp

"ok now this is the arby's where james works ... he hooks me up with horsey sauce"

her song about her walk down main street with me yesterday would have been:

"Almost got into a fist fight with a Verizon salesman/The heroin zombies are out in force just like the birds and the first spring flowers/The pork belly taco at the Brass Buckle is insanely good/Fuck the bong store those guys suck/So many ambulances today..."

"and here's the brand new vape store. those guys blow real big clouds."

immediate reaction was pretty much the same as schwitterz' :/

i don't feel the need to love everything by people i love. i don't think i'll be buying this based on what i've heard. but that's okay!

they're gonna put a wal-mart heeeeere

idk i kinda like it. are the lyrics not taken verbatim from this guy's description of dc

so it's not about engaging with dc but engaging with what her randomly-picked driver said about dc? hmm

Yeah surely it's about commonplace attitudes to a place rather than the place, and she maybe got in the car intending to put the driver's words into the song?

This is one of those things where I liked the music before I'd fitted it to the lyrics, I was okay with the lyrics on the page, but together they really jarr. The way she sings Walmart really bugs me.

was it tom green who used to sing on the street and just sing about whoever was walking by? "I'm wearing yellow pants yeah i've got yellow pants on..."

i always liked that bit.

yah and he would put his butt on things and sing it

I feel like there will be some fascinating reviews of this album. So much to say about her methodology and what she's trying to get across. More divisive than LES for sure.

the lyrics deliberately present a series of dislocated, basically meaningless, "drive by" comments about an unfamiliar place. snapshots, quotations, poverty tourism, whatever. the video & backstory draw attention to this, but even without the extratextual support, i think it should be clear to us that the song isn't about the place it describes so much as its own manner of observation and description. i mean, i'm surprised that anyone is criticizing its portaiture. that said, i might have reservations about its use of a real place, real poverty, real people's lives as the backdrop for some sneaky meta-critique. but i suppose that's for people who actually live there to complain about, if they care to.

great song! like the last one too. the weird out-of-step deadness of the backup singers seems deliberate (while I'm making excuses...)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/arts-and-entertainment/wp/2016/03/19/communityofhope/

The choir director was just told about the video, and asked to comment:

But Scott wishes their voices accompanied a different vision of Anacostia. “There are so many amazing things in the neighborhood. There is this all-star basketball game they do in Barry Farms. They’re about to build a Busboys and Poets. The Anacostia Arts Center is around the corner from the church,” he says. “There are so many great things and programs in the neighborhood.”

Scott remains confused about the Walmart line. In January, the company backed out of its plan to open a store in Southeast. But why, Scott wonders, does Harvey sing about it like it would’ve been a bad thing?

“A lot of people are disappointed,” Scott says. “Somebody has to build a Walmart. Somebody has to work in a Walmart. A Walmart means jobs.”

and Walmart has always been known for treating their employees well and paying high wages

Walmart treating its employees well is a secondary concern if you're coming from the position of desperately needing a job, any job, to make ends meet.

I hope this thread doesn't become pro-Walmart just out of spite for PJ Harvey...

It's not a pro-Walmart position, it's an "understand how your privilege allows you choices that aren't available to others" position.

True. Nothing wrong with reasonable jobs for people that need them.

A Walmart means jobs for people who desperately need them but it also represents a pretty thin form of "hope". Which might be the point.

doesn't DC have a living wage law? so wal-mart would have to pay higher wages than they usually do.

IMO there's practically no way PJH makes a record 'about' anacostia that isn't cringeworthy, unless she really just gave over her 'voice' to the people who live there, by setting their words to music in a sympathetic manner. otherwise, she can either presume to speak for the residents (hmmmm) or she can endlessly and pointlessly reflect on her position as observer (a disease that highly-educated and sensitive people in positions of privilege are frequently afflicted with).

i also just generally have a negative gut reaction to the whole rat race of british singer-songwriters making 'important' albums 'about stuff.' call it a Bono aversion.

but i like PJH's music a lot so

xp. bono isn't british

right but he's definitely in that cultural milieu

of people competing for the mercury prize or whatever

maybe we could like wait until the actual album is released before rushing to declare it "cringeworthy"

i didn't declare anything cringeworthy

but yes this thread including my posts is incredibly boring and pointless

that song is v v cringy sorry

yesterday someone showed me the book that goes along with the album. pretty intense. and labor intensive! apparently let england shake wasn't enough of an art project. or work of art. this thing is much more involved it seems.

also, i would just like to say that my friend jess puts out excellent music under the name Schurt Kwitters. Kurt Schwitterz reminded me of that...

https://www.discogs.com/Schurt-Kwitters-Schurt-Kwitters/master/410871

the song about an ALCOHOLIC NATIVE AMERICAN WOMAN who has abandoned TRADITIONAL SUMAC AND OTHER HERBS is the most stupid thing pj harvey has ever written

for every moment where this works musically there are like 4-5 where i'm trying my hardest to block out the lyrics

hoo boy

the song about an ALCOHOLIC NATIVE AMERICAN WOMAN who has abandoned TRADITIONAL SUMAC AND OTHER HERBS is the most stupid thing pj harvey has ever written

― cher guevara (lex pretend), Thursday, April 14, 2016 1:34 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is...discouraging, but I'm still holding out hope. Like I want to believe that she can find a way to make even a lyric that fits that description work somehow.

Also, I've liked both advance tracks.

pj writing/singing about my town is surreal/disappointing in the same way that meeting someone you've long admired is usually a weird letdown.

my guess is that, when she refers to the woman in the "redskins cap" and a "new painkiller for the native people" she's actually referring to african-americans.

but yeah, these songs kinda radiate cluelessness and have a creative writing 101 feel to them so far imo.

not trying to hear you

Scared to listen to this. Everything about it seems very "101," and the Pitchfork review, while bending over backwards to be as positive as possible (which is fair, because Harvey is such a hugely talented artist she deserves the benefit of the doubt), basically shrugs and boils it down to a bunch of ideas with no clear intent/impact in search of the right medium. She sold tickets to watch her record it, released a book of poetry, now comes the album, next comes the documentary ... maybe it'll be a dance piece after that? Photo exhibition?

the song about an ALCOHOLIC NATIVE AMERICAN WOMAN who has abandoned TRADITIONAL SUMAC AND OTHER HERBS is the most stupid thing pj harvey has ever written

― cher guevara (lex pretend),

daaaaamn

Yikes. Does she have a shitty new friend who is giving her bad advice?!

an alcoholic Native American woman

From the Spin review:

The marching “Medicinals” suffers again though, for pairing an attractive tune with an ogling description of a disabled woman in a Redskins cap that makes it difficult to tell if Harvey’s more disgusted by the woman’s existence or her predicament

http://www.spin.com/2016/04/review-pj-harvey-the-hope-six-demolition-project/

all these reviews make the record sound terrible but rate it 7+

White Chalk is still the worst PJ Harvey album by far, that 2007 bundle of piano ruminations with names like “Dear Darkness” tucked inside tossed-off album art.

:|

anyway i am looking forward to apprehensively listening to this

white chalk is amazing though

(and WAIT @ naming any album other than STFC PJH's worst prior to this)

laura snapes' review in pitchfork is totally excellent though

white chalk is amazing though
otm

this one has a few great musical moments for sure ("the ministry of defence"! and the "wade in the water" section of "river anacostia") but its overall musical identity isn't blowing me away, and the concept...idk, applying the detached journalistic voice that was perfect for LES to current situations doesn't work at all, it's less "inhabiting historic ghosts/haunting battlefields from the future" and more "rich white lady's observations make u think"

i really like it and i said so in my review but i guess non-new york broadsheets don't get traction these days :P

maura's review:

https://www.bostonglobe.com/arts/music/2016/04/13/album-review-harvey-the-hope-six-demolition-project/HiXiNnGmSRElV1coSPzBYN/story.html

SFTC is perfect imo

Is that acronym "Songs From the City?" Yeah, I love it. It's the one I listen to the most after "Dry," by some margin.

Stories, rather.

yeah, if some of the lyrics on sftc were a little bit dumb, it was in a way that i guess didn't matter to me.

fully admit that my frame of reference doesn't do this new one any favors. but I don't have to love everything my favorites make.

i didn't like stories for years because it seemed entirely too indebted to Patti Smith but now I think it's great.

that said, this new one doesn't sound good at all.

iirc lex is a staunch contrarian when it comes to stories

i know a LOT of ppl who dislike stories, the only album i can think of where as many ppl i know got of the bus is tbyml (and a lot of ppl got on there so it kinda counteracts it). i love it, it's her new morning.

I can understand not digging stories…in early 2000s NYC, you heard it in bars and clubs more than any record other than Is this it, and I was often annoyed with the Thom Yorke duet. I'm surprised that Herr Pretend holds her in any esteem whatsoever, given that she represents certain '90s brit-rock verities.

I have not fucked with White Chalk or LES, barring hearing a song here and there, not via my own agency…is it right that she's not necessarily trying to sing, like, conventionally well & powerfully any longer? Dance Hall has "Dead Urn" which is an olympian achievement vocally… but it seems like she's trying sound like an elderly woman or a child on the tunes I've heard, and she sings quite plainly on these new ones, which I suppose suits the allegedly unadorned conceit. But goddamn did she used to let that shit rip.

I remember that I read somewhere, maybe an interview, that given her voice and her guitar were her most powerful tools, she tried to do White Chalk by minimising both as an experiment

White Chalk is pretty amazing, I love that record.

so no consensus then

i don't dislike stories but it really pales in comparison to the rest of her discography, i don't see how this is contrarianism

i've never had the sense that it was held in particular high esteem by PJH fans, just by rock critics/casual fans who were relieved that she briefly wasn't scary or difficult

Stories was my way in; nowhere near my favourite now, but I have a lot of affection for it.

But anyway, I've not been put off by the discussion around the new album ad will be picking up the album later today. I thought it was pretty well accepted that Polly never sings as herself; she's said repeatedly in the past that all her songs are in character, and though she's obviously not giving interviews these days I've no reason to doubt that. So I'm looking forward to this, albeit with very minor reservations after loving LES dearly.

Uh Huh Her is worse than Stories, you'd be forgiven for forgetting that one even existed though. I'm not that keen on To Bring You My Love either but obviously that's canonical Polly for a lot of people.

uh huh her is a great album! and the perfect, perfect follow-up to stories, it was a great relief

I loved/love the first two so much that I was totally befuddled by how crazy people went over To Bring You My Love, though when she reinvented herself as this sort of crazy flamenco dancer confrontationist to tour behind it I thought it worked really well.

I can't remember a damn thing about Uh Huh Her and I've owned it for more than a decade. I can still remember pretty much all the songs on Stories.

just watched some clips of PH performing on the Uh huh her tour, and now I dimly remember that there were snide suggestions that she was trying look and act like Karen O, seeing as clearly the latter had been quite fond of the former…does anyone else remember that? now I see that in her band at the time she had the young man who's now in the RHCP and got into the suckass Rock Hall based on like 2 years in the band.

Say what you want about RHCP and the Rock Hall, but Josh Klinghoffer is pretty cool.

he's like a a pro dude! i would expect PJ Harvey would have pro dudes. what's wrong w.that?

i don't dislike stories but it really pales in comparison to the rest of her discography, i don't see how this is contrarianism

though it hasn't worn nearly as well as her early albums, i liked stories quite a bit at the time, and i always feel like i'm taking the contrarian position when i defend it

at the time, i thought stories just sounded kinda generic, which wasn't something you could accuse PJ of previously. but whenever i hear it, i like it a bit more than i expect.

If anything, if it sounds generic it may be because her lyrics are at the most straight-forward romantic/scared/honest/etc., at least to my ears. There's not a lot of obvious artifice/character playing. I find a lot of her albums to be almost intentionally alienating, a tendency of hers, off and on. "Stories" is the opposite of that. (For reference, I think something like To Bring You My Love is somewhere in the middle.)

From the Pitchfork review:

At Hope Six’s most thrilling points, Harvey delves back into the influence of her parents’ record collection to channel the swagger of Captain Beefheart, John Lee Hooker, and Howlin’ Wolf

Hoping this rings true to me when I listen to the album.

I find a lot of her albums to be almost intentionally alienating, a tendency of hers, off and on. "Stories" is the opposite of that.

this is why it's her worst!

I dunno. I found it honestly accessible (as opposed to a sell out move). I think a lot of her alienating stuff is bullshit. I rate her so highly as a singer, songwriter and musician that it bugs me when she works equally hard to undercut her strengths.

Hope Six’s most thrilling points, Harvey delves back into the influence of her parents’ record collection to channel the swagger of Captain Beefheart, John Lee Hooker, and Howlin’ Wolf

see I'm tired of these people and their influence.

stories has her least interesting singing, songwriting and arrangements though. literally all of her other albums take those qualities into more emotionally affecting and complex territory. and i don't think her "difficulty" comes at the expense of accessibility or listenability at any point - for all the "stories is her accessible move" i don't find its hooks or traditional songcraft at all superior to those on is this desire? or to bring you my love, or any of her other albums tbh.

Yeah, that makes sense, I guess. But I do think her difficulty is in some ways an affectation, and that it does come at the expense of her listeners. But then, I literally never listen to White Chalk, Uh Huh Her, Is This Desire? or either of her John Parish albums, which is a pretty huge chunk of work from one of my faves. In fact, I can't think of any other favorite act whose catalog I largely avoid. 10 albums, 5 of which I listen to lots, 5 of which I doubt I'll ever listen to again. And the new one.

i haven't listened to white chalk in a long time. that's a cool record. and i came late to it. didn't hear it when it came out. i don't know if i've ever heard uh huh her.

i also don't remember what is this desire? sounds like.

i think the only thing i remember not really liking was that duo album she did in the 90's.

and i'm still afraid that if i keep reading about the new one its somehow gonna magically take away from how much i loved LES. maybe i should stop reading about the new one...

white chalk is perfect listening when you're ill and feverish fyi

PJH fans who don't listen to is this desire? baffle me, it's her absolute pinnacle and she thinks so too

i should get a copy of is this desire? i don't have one. i should look for the old stuff i haven't heard for ages. would like to hear it again.

yeah, i think it's her best album too.

is this desire? is amazing. she played on pbs' sessions at w 54th around that time and just killed it.

i just looked in my stupid store and all i have is rid of me and i don't really need to hear that now. i've heard it so many times.

totally weird to me that anybody who rates her highly would not very much dig the two parish records. Dance hall's got her most magnificent singing…and Scott (I wanna come to your store; is it near great barrington? I'm going there this weekend), get thee to Is this desire with the quickness…contains my favorite thing she ever done…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XPkZwuUlKY

dance hall at louse point is also incredible yeah ("taut", holy shit), i always forget about the second parish collab though

i remember when Stories came out and i don't know if surprised is the right word but i was impressed that she was still making such solid records. and meanwhile 11 years later she puts out what is definitely one of my favorite records. that's hard to do! that's like 20 years of good stuff. until...

yeah it's funny that right now she's basically at the Empire Burlesque point in her career

i just haven't heard is this desire? since it came out. i remember liking it. maybe i should give the 90's collab album another try. i guess i just wanted more like the first three albums when i heard that back then.

it's frustrating to me that I've never been able to find a live version that approaches the dark majesty of that recording, but this is okay…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfFssEJfc7k

i named my dog after that song. here's a low quality rip of that sessions @ w 54th:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ow3OS9pmYwg

oddly enough, I have never seen her speak until right now via some guardian video. Is she posh, Lex? I don't have much of a radar for UK class shit…

Perfect Day for Elise is the only song I can recall from that one. And maybe it was in a movie?

wouldn't ever call her posh but just solidly middle class west country farming stock i guess

tonight show appearance still one of the most awkward/uncomfortable moments i've ever witnessed on television. after she fired her band or whatever.

performance AND cringe interview with leno.

Listening with fresh (older) ears and yeah, still not feeling "Is This Desire?" Don't like the production/playing/songs that much, and I forgot about all the grungy trip-hop elements. But yeah, "Elise" is still great.

it's a good record with great highlights, but by no means the apex of her career

it's the sonic consistency and immersive quality of Stories that has worn really well for me. It wasn't my favorite PJH record when it came out (To Bring You My Love was) but it's the one I most enjoy returning to at this point

Yeah, going straight from "Is This Desire?" to "Stories" on the stereo just now is like going from black and white (and sepia and grey) to Technicolor.

I think her vocals on tracks like "Big Exit" (when she goes low and growly) and "Kamikaze" (when she goes high) are just so awesome and energized. The show behind this album here (when she was stuck in the US immediately post 9/11, iirc) was incredible, especially given the coincidental themes and overtones of the album.

I still adore about half of SFTC, but much of the contemporary criticism sounded relieved at her accessibility.

The first half of ITD? is the strongest of her career imo.

I don't recall reviews relieved at her accessibility, but maybe your memory is better than mine. I remember it being described as her "in love" album or whatever, which I suppose by default is accessible.

I always assumed a lot of the high praise for "Is This Desire?" came from it being the first new album of hers people heard after getting introduced to her by "To Bring You My Love."

Male critics love it when female (and male) artists Find Love.

I think everyone generally loves that. But when I first heard it, the very first listen (which I remember, on the train, with a CD walkman and an early advance of the album) I thought it was so, so dark. Like "Tunnel of Love" or something, an album about love and being in love but totally cloaked in shadow and doubt.

"Beautiful Feeling" nails that.

I haven't been paying attention to the lyrics on THSDP so I haven't had any cringe moments; I'm enjoying how these songs immensely.

"Male critics love it when female (and male) artists Find Love."

i did not know this! i thought they liked it when people were pissed off.

misery's cool until it actually makes you feel uncomfortable or alienated

Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea [Island, 2000]
If Nirvana and Robert Johnson are rock's essence for you, so's To Bring You My Love. But if you believe the Beatles and George Clinton had more to say in the end, this could be the first PJ album you adore as well as admire. It's a question of whether you use music to face your demons or to vault right over them. Either way the demons will be there, of course, and nobody's claiming they won't catch you by the ankle and bring you down sometime--or that facing them doesn't give you a shot at running them the fuck over. Maybe that's how Harvey got to where she could enjoy the fruits of her own genius and sexuality. Or maybe she just met the right guy. Tempos and pudendum juiced, she feels the world ending and feels immortal on the very first track. The other 11 songs she takes from there. A+

I know it's impolite to put it this way, but sometimes getting laid can really be good for a person. On the recorded evidence--with no claim to any lowdown on Polly Jean Harvey's actual private life, a mystery as closely guarded as the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein and the formula for Coke--that's the secret of PJ Harvey's Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, which even she allows is the happiest-sounding album she's ever made. What she daren't suggest is that it may also be the best.
The shift is first apparent in the music, which is, not to beat around the bush, fast. Way more easeful than the tightly wound, dynamically extreme bluesism of the career-launching Dry and Rid of Me, it's also way livelier than 1995's critical triumph To Bring You My Love, where Harvey's desperate carnality took a sharply metaphysical turn, and 1998's rhetorical question Is This Desire?, the answer to which was maybe. While her austere sonic signature remains, the vocals are discernibly more relaxed, the tunes welcoming and even expansive. Listen for shadings on the guitar attack, too--piano, organ, marimba, is that bandoneon? The album's an up from the first strums of "Big Exit," unquestionably the most rousing opener of her career.

Granted, maybe you'll smell shtick even so--our Polly, getting archetypal with the elementals again. After all, "Big Exit" does meditate painfully on human suffering. But the song's aesthetic thrust is all in the two lines of euphoria her ruminations try to rationalize away: "I'm immortal/When I'm with you." That's why it's so rousing. As she reports in the redolently titled "This Is Love": "I can't believe that the axis turns/On suffering when you taste so good." Long blessed with uncommon talent and success, Harvey can finally accept her "bad fortune slipping away."

Harvey has always been sex-obsessed. But there are better things to do with sex than obsess about it--enjoy it, for instance. And though the love affair the album describes or invents may end badly--e.g., the furious "Kamikaze," or the lovely "The Mess We're In," sung mostly by Radiohead's Thom Yorke--at least it sounds like a true affair, rather more full-bodied than "Robert DeNiro, sit on my face." Harvey and her beau ideal dance and get drunk, walk through Little Italy and sit looking at the skyline from a Brooklyn rooftop. Maybe they'll fulfill the dream of the finale: "But one day/We'll float/Take life as it comes." Or maybe she'll attain that state of grace with someone else. Whatever happens, this album will be there to remind her how happiness feels.

Rolling Stone, Nov. 9, 2000

no trolling RS reviews! too late...

Well, that's Xgau for you.

misery's cool until it actually makes you feel uncomfortable or alienated

and then it's art (man)

im ignoring the lyrics and like djp im enjoying this mick harv is god

Suddenly remembered that I saw her twice behind "Stories," once at a club but the other opening for U2! (This is back when Margaret Fiedler was in the band.) What struck me was despite a decade of critical praise and rabid fans and releasing an "accessible" album that got great reviews, I felt like no one in that place knew who the fuck she was at all. A useful reminder of scale.

Was that the last album she properly toured behind?

nah there was a big les tour

Maybe she just doesn't tour the States? There have been one-offs here and there, I guess.

Honestly I'll still stand by the actual rock songs on Stories, they're mostly fantastic. It's the moments when the tempo drops that let it down, and unfortunately there are lots of them.

The only albums I genuinely love all the way through are Dry and LES, but Is This Desire has her highest highs almost unquestionably.

Just starting the new one again. It's the first time I've heard Hope Six in a month and the clumsy way in which the lyrics are forced into the melody would put the Manic Street Preachers to shame.

nah dude she toured the states for les. there's a sickkkk soundboard recording of the san francisco show circulating.

OMG that stories review.

xpost Yeah, it looks like she played ... 4 shows in the US behind it, two in NYC, two in CA (one of those Coachella). Looks like her 2009 tour with Parish was more extensive.

oh my bad.

Good album. Might even turn out to be a great one.

I have the new one but haven't listened yet, so for now I'll just post this dyn-o-mite performance of my favorite song from Is This Desire:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ZR4QYRi5Hc

OK so on first pass I like the album -- without paying a lot of attention to the lyrics, but the ones that stood out to me seemed more like fragments than complete thoughts. I don't get the sense she's up to anything too straightforward. I like the rhythms and the saxophone, and her singing.

there's a sickkkk soundboard recording of the san francisco show circulating.

― kurt schwitterz

http://www.npr.org/event/music/135519051/let-san-francisco-shake-pj-harvey-in-concert

"Medicinals" is righteous but am not surprised that ILX posters would be outspoken in their cynicism about traditional medicines, animism, etc.

This album is so bad and annoying I'm now frightened to revisit her earlier records in case the Emperor's New Clothes feeling persists.

I'm liking it fine, especially the sax.

Between this and Blackstar, I'm liking a lot more sax-heavy records than usual this year.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/hiphopdx-production/2014/04/Big-Boi_04-09-2014.jpg

this album gets worse with each listen :(

I'd been sort of dreading listening to it - a PJ Harvey album that's great if you tune out the lyrics is not really a great PJ Harvey album - but there's nothing as clunky as the opening track elsewhere. It's definitely at its best when the music is at its most brutal or most elegiac though - The Ministry of Defence is astonishing, and the second half of River Anacostia is like wow.

Enough of the jauntier ones though. Looking back on LES there were definitely moments where she was just the right side of pushing it, and that album's acclaim was like carte blanche for her to go well over that line. Something about the project feels misconceived even when the music itself is lovely.

The way she sings "a displaced family eating a cold horse's hoof" is just... no. There are some real crimes against scansion throughout.

I thought this was pretty good on first listen but less so on the second go. Agree about the clunky scansion. I like the opener a lot regardless, weirdly the verses remind me of 'Looking for the Magic' by the Dwight Twilley Band...

Apparently, this is number one in the midweeks.

the first song on this sounds like 'take the skinheads bowling'

take the skinheads bowling is an excellent song.

what's difficult to accept is the dependence on falsetto and echo, at times both on the same song.

the second half of River Anacostia is like wow

first PJH album where the male backing vox have been a highlight

Apparently, this is number one in the midweeks.

Polly Jean: How many copies got returned on Monday?
Chorus: I heard it was 28,000

this record is good

first PJH album where the male backing vox have been a highlight

Rob Ellis begs to differ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYIAy4uF3UI

Polly Jean: How many copies got returned on Monday?
Chorus: I heard it was 28,000

― Jeff W, Tuesday, April 19, 2016

lol at this

This list stinks:
http://www.stereogum.com/1872593/pj-harvey-albums-from-worst-to-best/franchises/counting-down/

Might as well have written 'I like noisy guitars' and left it at that.

I might rate White Chalk and 4TD higher but: "I like guitars" isn't the thing with ITD? at 2.

nah I like the list fine because ITD? is so high

Yeah, White Chalk's quite high, too. "I like noisy guitars" doens't seem like the narrative there.

ILM is the only place I've seen that gives a damn for WC and ISD.

hooray for ilm i guess

Counterpoint: get the hint, ILM!

Although I like the placing of Is This Desire? so highly, Uh Huh Her is way too high and it feels already like they're revising Let England Shake's reverence based on the lukewarm reception of the Hope Six Demolition Project.

Number one!

Well done you.

I finally checked it out last week---had to make myself listen a second time, but something pulled me back in, like it had to; I'm usually not that dutiful---and now, 3.2 spins in, I'm really enjoying most of her tragical reality tour (though not tracks 1 & 2). She sounds startling and startled, by the details and sheer weirdness of these times, as her voice veers and finds purchase in the dark heavy shiny spiky curves, suggesting a garden, sometimes of wrought iron ---initially thought it was all from DC, so this would be the long fences of Georgetown----or big black vehicles, limos or four-wheel-drives, cruising and bouncing through the various neighborhoods and becoming the architecture, monuments and housing developements and parks and gutted areas and demolition equipment---for renovation, yay: involved framework, as the people surface and flash by, fade away once, again, in her snapshots and notes.
I could go to her site and get all the words, but think they're better this way, for the most part Calling it the Vietnam Memorial, leaving "Veterans" out, somehow ricocheting off "Lincoln Memorial", making me think more of the associated bloodbaths: stark profusion, more sheer weirdness, also rebounding off her chirpy vocal, leading a children's expedition around the grounds.
Quite an emotional range here, but I also like the one bit of straight-up lightning up, when she's tromping along, carrying on about all those groovy traditional "Medicinals", 'til she comes across "an old lady in a wheelchair, with her Redskins cap on backwards", who is taking some kind of de facto medicine from its newspaper wrapping, as I hear it: the folk process continues, y'all. And she follows it, for her own purposes.
Which reminds me, re old and contemporary musical elements mashed into personalized, stylized expression, without hogging the foreground, that she now seems like a colleague of tuneyards.

"River Anacostia" is so magnificent.

^ Cosign. This is probably my least favorite Pj Harvey album in recent memory, but she always manages to offer up some gems.

Whenever I've had to drive through DC in the last half year, I get this uncontrollable urge to sing "The Community of Hope" but with new lyrics about whatever random shit I happen to see out the window....

Anybody catch the current US tour? I'm probably picking up a ticket today for the show here tomorrow, and am wondering what to expect.

10 piece band playing nearly all of hope six, few songs of LES and i think 5 songs older than that. hour and a half. sax solos. was good.

a friend saw her in Philly and said it was extraordinary

Ticket in hand! Saved about $15 by paying cash at the box office too, because fuck you Ticketmaster website.

Fantastic Show. General admission section was right in front of the stage, so I was no more that 8-12 ft. from her and the band the whole performance. Fun moment came at the beginning of the encore when PJ, who'd been very precise and controlled the whole night, came in a beat too early with her vocal, instead of with the band on the one for "Medicinals", she caught this just a slit second too late, put her hands to her face to hide her embarrassment/laughter before running over to John Parish and putting her head on his shoulder to collect herself before returning to the mic with a big smile and say "Let's try that again, shall we?"

Awesome post, Grisso. Seing her on Friday, so excited. Saw her on Stories tour, she's stone cold classic

I can only wholeheartly agree with the praise of her live shows - the show I saw was amazing. What a performer she is! And the 10-piece band sounds tight and massive - it was a far cry from the (also great but intimate and messy) White Chalk solo show I had seen a few years ago. I'm catching the tour again in the summer when she comes back to Europe, can't wait.

Overall I like The Hope Six Demolition Project quite a bit - and it's grown on me a lot over the past year since I was pretty indifferent to it at first - but I think that the outtakes from the album she's released online (Guilty / A Dog Called Money / I'll Be Waiting) are stronger than some of the tracks that actually made the record. PJ doesn't do interviews anymore but according to her co-producers (Flood, Parish) the songs didn't 100% fit her vision for the album... which kind of makes me admire her even more for her self-editing instincts and discipline. It takes some strong focus to leave a song like Guilty off the record.

Here's a review of the Austin show

http://music.blog.austin360.com/2017/04/29/at-packed-stubbs-pj-harvey-thrilled-fans-and-avoided-nostalgia/

excerpts from the review:

Harvey, looking like she had not aged a day in 20 years, took the stage with a nine-piece band who took the stage in single file, some playing horns (Harvey played a sax on and off throughout the evening), most playing drums. It looked and felt like the world’s most Episcopalian second line.

...fully half of the songs were from “Hope Six” with three from the enigmatic “White Chalk” and a smattering from older albums

SET LIST
Chain of Keys
The Ministry of Defense
The Community of Hope
The Orange Monkey
A Line in the Sand
Let England Shake
The Words That Maketh Murder
The Glorious Land
Medicinals
When Under Ether
Dollar, Dollar
The Devil
The Wheel
The Ministry of Social Affairs
50ft Queenie
Down by the Water
To Bring You My Love
River Anacostia
ENCORE:
Guilty
Is This Desire?

That's a similar set to what we got in Houston. Seeing some of the other setlists, it looks like they shuffle around some of the newer songs in the latter part of the set from night to night, and rotate a couple of the catalog songs in and out from a pool. We got "To Talk To You" from White Chalk mid-set, and she closed with "The River" from ITD?. I'm not often jealous of Dallas, but they got "Highway 61 Revisited" and "The Last Living Rose" (neither of which we got) for an encore.

So happy to hear "The River" live

For her show near Washington DC tonight, she will be joined by Anacostia's Union Temple Baptist Choir, who were on the controversial song on her latest effort

She played a fair chunk of the album last Saturday as well as cuts from Let England Shake. She wore her saxophone like a guitar. Except for performances of "To Bring You My Love" and "Down by the Water" in the last ten minutes, she didn't cede an inch to audience expectations. She was in her own world.

What's funny is I was with a friend who professed to be a huge fan, particularly of the first three albums and "Songs," a friend who also supposedly really likes Nick Cave, and a friend whose politics lean left of left. And yet, he seemed really irked that she was playing mostly stuff from the most recent albums. I think it's more than likely an outdoor festival is simply not the best place to ask someone to meet someone half way, but yeah, she didn't cede an inch. Didn't deviate a bit from past sets on the same tour, either, so perhaps she and the band are just not currently equipped to change the script. From setlist to staging, this is what this tour is.

This might be an unpopular opinion but I think that the songs from Let England Shake and The Hope Six Demolition Project work amazingly well live. I was totally fine with just a handful of oldies (“50ft Queenie” / “Down by the Water” / “To Bring You My Love” / “Highway 61 Revisited” / “Is This Desire?”) thrown in at the very end of the show and for the encore. I guess I understand some people’s frustration that she refuses to play most of her biggest hits (e.g. Stories... have been 100% absent from her setlists on this tour) but then again, PJ Harvey is not really the kind of artist from whom you’d expect a nostalgia/best-of set.

That being said, the last time I saw her was at her own (fantastic) show. In two weeks I’m seeing her again, this time at an open-air festival gig. I wonder if my opinion will change.

They work better live, yes; the material's histrionic roots demand a performer with gusto. I thought The Hope Six an interesting failure.

Personally, new material or no, I'd prefer she play guitar again.

Alfred's dead on regarding Pj being in her own world. I thought the show in Seattle was top-notch, she's a consummate performer. Josh mentioned the setlist/staging above, I really do believe this is an intentional statement and that the older material would get in the way (hence why it's at the end). When she does switch gears to the old material the crowd goes wild and that serves her well. My only disappointment was "Near The Memorials.." in the encore - felt like she could've thrown a bone there, but she did play "River" so...

She's kind of like Neil Young in that respect...you go see her, and you gonna see the show she wants to play. I can understand the way and why the material has been selected. The band she's got is more or less the band that was heavily involved in the creation of the last two albums, so of course that's the stuff they'll play and can sustain a set list alongside a few older songs (which really aren't rearranged the way they could have been for this band--imagine a "50ft. Queenie" with everybody doing percussion!). It's remarkably brassy/ballsy that this is how she's doing her first large-scale US tour in yoinks.

I’d also like to add that the White Chalk material—she’s been playing “When Under Ether,” “The Devil,” “To Talk to You,” and now apparently “Dear Darkness” and “White Chalk,” too—fits very well with the current show, despite the lyrical content of these songs being more introspective and not political/historiographical/journalistic.

This might be just my underdeveloped theory but . . . people often point out Let England Shake as a major sea change in her career (where the focus shifted from inspecting the personal to observing the world around her), whereas I think that the bigger step was her move from blues- to folk-inspired songwriting, which seems to have occurred around 2005-2006, when she was working on White Chalk—although some might say that songs like “Pocket Knife” or “The Desperate Kingdom of Love” from Uh Huh Her had foreshadowed it.

This is of course very simplifying, it’s not like every pre-2006 PJ song has its roots in blues and every post-2006 one in folk, but her vocal delivery definitely changed—and I’m not only talking about her singing in a higher register, but also about enunciation/articulation. Gone were the dirty riffs and rhythmic guitar playing in favour of strummed chords; the vocal melodies became simpler, the arrangements more acoustic, even her lyrics bear more resemblance to (or even directly reference) old folk songs. I guess that’s why the inward-looking White Chalk tracks fit nicely among the newer ones—they seem to come from the same musical family.

(I hope I make sense. Sometimes it’s tricky to put my thoughts into English words, and I’ve had two pints, so forgive me if it reads as gibberish and carry on.)

I agree with that - White Chalk is where she started her current approach, which is an approach I like as much as the first two records. Everything else in the middle is hit-or-miss for me.

This has been posted before, but I would KILL to see her play a version of Grow, Grow, Grow like this. The fact that she does whatever she wants and always has is what makes me respect her immensely though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0uctrQBJSY8

http://www.undertheradarmag.com/news/pj_harvey_and_harry_escott_share_new_cover_of_english_folk_standard_an_acre/

aaaaaaaaaaamazing
her voice! the song!

i like the arrangement a lot too

it's also super long!
long live pj harvey

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

anybody have any idea which pj song this is referencing at 3.56 - sounds like something off TBYML

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

That's beautiful, An Acre of Land, and pretty much a perfect fit for that movie I'd imagine.

A new BBC4 radio documentary follows Polly around as she's composing music for a theatre adaptation of All About Eve. Lovely to see her creative process so intimately and up close (including her recording demos at home on a Tascam 4-track). She doesn't seem to be interested in being a alt-rock star/performer anymore, too — it seems that the last tour was kind of goodbye to that part of her life.

Also, excerpts of gorgeous music throughout (and I don't only mean the two songs that are the main focus of the documentary, but also about the instrumental and ambient pieces from all the different plays she's contributed to); makes me wish they'd release an anthology of her theatre scores.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0002g8h

A new album - soundtrack to All About Eve - out this Friday.

https://i.imgur.com/t6ptDYE.jpg

01 Becoming
02 Shimmer
03 The Sandman [ft. Gillian Anderson]
04 Waltz
05 Descending
06 Lieben
07 Ascending
08 Cadenza
09 The Moth [ft. Lily James]
10 Träume
11 Arpeggio Waltz
12 Change in C

Two tracks available here:
https://pitchfork.com/news/pj-harvey-shares-2-new-songs-from-all-about-eve-play-listen/

That's Phil Collins' daughter, right? If Phil could still play I would love to hear him on a PJ Harvey record.

Different people. Phil's daughter is Lily... Collins. This is the lead actress from Baby Driver.

Even so! Phil and PJ would be rad.