"Uh Huh Her." Thoughts on the new PJ Harvey?

Anyway, this one...It didn't make much of an impression the first two times I listened it, but on the third, it clicked. I'm really digging it now.

"The Pocket Knife"'s my favorite track at this moment: "I don't wanna cause a fuss / I just wanna make my own fuck-ups." "The Letter" is surprisingly dance-able (sort of). I had it playing on my computer while I was getting dressed this morning, and I noticed myself really moving to it without even realizing it.

"Seagulls" isn't listed as an actual track on her site, but it was an individual download on the page I found the album on. It's really unnecessary--just a little over a minute's worth of seagulls squawking. Which kind of reminds me of those stupid Sounds of Nature tapes my mom used to put on when she'd get stressed out.

I like just about everything else on Uh Huh Her quite a bit. Even this minute-and-half-long instrumental thing called "The End" is great (mostly just because it vaguely reminds me of Michael Nyman).

Is This Desire? was a fitfully successful blend of her romantic angst with Trickyian sonics, and is definitely her ugliest and most inaccessible album, which turned a lot of people off. Some of the songs seem almost incomplete and underdeveloped in how short and stark they were, but conceptually, it was her strongest and most coherent work. Probably. It's a toss up between ItD and RoM. I loved how almost evrey song narrated a doomed tale of pitiful female protagonist - and they all had great names. I wish that duet from Angels with Dirty Faces was included as a bonus track, even though it mar the concept. It's also her most classicist, Victorian record, re: the songwriting, so I can understand how some might think it's just humdrum self-indulgent performance art. But I think it's mysterious and beautiul, and the apex of her storytelling skills with how much she can convey through saying so little (revisit "The Wind," "Catherine," "A Perfect Day Elise" - and the sublime "Angelyne").

I anticipate "Uh Huh Her" being a return to form, and I much prefer this cover to her clutching a Gucci bag wearing sunglasses. At night.

Dry is head and shoulders above her other albums to me, then Rid of Me and the 4-Track Demos, and then the last three.

Also, Pitchfork agrees with my view, so of course I am correct

eh, but she sings them nicely though.

As usual I have to remind myself that it's not the fault of Petridish, who I suppose can't help being stupid, but the idiots who pay him money to excrete his shit in a broadsheet newspaper.

I'm not that big a PJ Harvey fan really, I can't stand the songs when she goes mental.. but her melodic songs are great. The Letter's really grown on me.. I didn't like it much at first, but the guitars in that are cool.

The thing that puzzled me last night was how both the blokes and the girls were obsessed with what she was wearing (a yellow dress and pink stillettos by the way.. photos here. You don't get that when you have blokes performing.. even if they were wearing cool boots.

I'm thinking that this'll be where the glamour-kitten image of Stories... and the dirty blues intensity of Dance Hall At Louse Point meet.

Man, I had the biggest crush on Alexis Petridis when I was 18 or so. ...my how times change.

yep.

Ha ha and of course "Taut" is the best thing Kim Gordon never did.

Anyway, since then I've had some guilt about not picking up "Is This Desire?" Just never got around to it.

I agree the new album's title and sleeve are both incredibly awful, but I'd like to hear it.

"Taut" is the best thing ever - "even the sonofgodhadtoDIEMYDARLIN'!!"

I thought "Stories" was her best LP ever, actually; I could care less about Thom Yorke but it still worked, that track. Didn't care for her Hal Hartley film too much but so what. Coming to New York did her some good I guess and I like the way she says "San Diego" on that last album. I like the way she seemed to have been all freaked out by America, too, I like her and above poster is right--what she does shouldn't work, it seems kinda simple and stupid but then she sings. Maybe she's been listening to Hasil Adkins or Jandek, judging by the new CD's cover, that's fine.

so, the michael medved of music criticism, then.

I like Rid of Me about as much as the subsequent three actually. I bought it when I was thirteen (one of my very first albums) and I still find that I like it more each time I play it (which is not a whole lot, admittedly!).

I'm actually quite looking forward to this album and I love the title and the cover more and more all the time.

Uh Huh Her was meant to arrive today... where is it? where? Fucking Royal Mail. Grrr.

On first listening, Uh Huh Her is definitely a step back toward some kind of emotional coherence and direction. Like her earlier stuff, it's understated, with few muddying layers, and seems half-written initially. This is a good thing. Many of these songs, while retaining the raw blues spine of her early 90s work, are wrapped in more Latin flesh. And thankfully, her unique eroticism is back, female but not generic.

At times, she almost sounds like she's flirting with preciousness a la Sinéad O'Connor circa I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, and she gets away with it. At others, she's a dark savant sibling to early Hole Courtney sans the histrionics. In fact, by mostly shedding her own histrionics, and injecting some kind of Patti Smithery (she's done that before, more overtly), her voice has reached its apotheosis (perhaps) without ever succumbing to the dreaded word/concept "mature".

Oh. Another quick observation: the album gets progressively stronger.

Fuck, this is nice. It'll change, I'm sure, but for now, standouts are "The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth", "Shame", "The Slow Drug", "It's You", "The Desperate Kingdom of Love" and "The Darker Days of Me and Him".

The shorter songs/interludes help stitch it together. It feels like it all belongs. (Even those seagulls.)

Embarrassing as it sounds, I love her (music!) more than ever. This makes me very happy.

I just want to defend Albini's production of Rid Of Me wholeheartedly. I remember when I first heard his production of Wedding Present Seamonsters and it took me years to get used to it despite my respect for both him and the Weddoes. With PJ, though, his production made perfect sense because there was more silence, more breathing room. It's hard to imagine that album having been better without him.

(As for my synopsis, I've quit worrying about embarrassing myself on ILM -- my personality leans toward the ridiculously effusive and enthusiastic, I just can't do hipster reserve, so I no longer even try.)