PJ Harvey.

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cobl04

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PJ Harvey is recording her ninth studio album as an exhibition within the Inland Revenue’s former staff gymnasium and rifle range at Somerset House, London.

From Jan 16th visitors will see and hear PJ Harvey, her guest musicians, recording engineers, and producers Flood and John Parish in a glazed architecturally-designed studio. For forty-five minutes at a time, groups of people will experience the crafting of a record, which could be anything from laying down a bass drum track, to discussions, improvisation, through to full performances of new songs.

One-way glass and sound proofing ensure that the musicians can concentrate on their work, but the space and the people who move through it will help to create both the process and presentation of this project.


Pretty cool. yes, we have a thread, but it's old as shit and has Let England Shake in the title. Plus I think I'm gonna try get into her music this year. I have Stories from the City Stories from the Sea and plan on sitting down with it real soon.
 
That's a great album. Big Exit, This Mess We're In and We Float are especially droolworthy.
 
Would you guys recommend this to someone who doesn't particularly like female vocalists?

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Let England Shake is one of the best albums of the past few years, so yes, definitely. It's pretty accessible too, in my opinion.
 
Stories From The City is probably my favorite from her, though I'm really enjoying Uh Huh Her lately.

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her stuff is good to real good

To Bring You My Love (1995) was her break though album for me

I caught a live show at The Variety Arts Center in L A, Tricky opened and joined her for a song or two, best show I saw that year
 
pj-harvey-the-hope-6.jpg



Out today. Amazon is selling the mp3 album for $7.99
 
Alright! There is some meat on these bones. We got us a stew going.

To me this flows fairly organically both in in terms of music and of its lyrical concerns, from Let England Shake. Maybe less ethereal.
 
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It's a pretty tasty stew today, too. I'm really happy she continued in the vein of LES. It's my favorite album of hers.

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It's obviously hard to get to grips with the lyrics in any sensible way after like two listens, but my god the horns on this album are fucking perfect. Particularly in songs like The Ministry of Social Affairs and Dollar, Dollar. Big, fat, claustrophic, swinging, aching.

On the, uh, controversies, I liked this from a review of the album:


Case in point, opening track and second single ‘The Community of Hope’ has already landed Peej in hot water with commentators who’ve taken it as a withering attack on life and conditions in the ghettos of America – specifically Ward 7 in Washington DC, a trip to which that yielded the lyrics “this is just drug town, just zombies… the school that looks like shit-hole, does that look like a nice place?”. Now I’m pretty sure that rather than the song being Harvey – who has never in her life written a lyric expressing a straightforward personal opinion – launching a savage attack on the poor of America, the song is quite the opposite. The deliberate glibness of her verse lyrics juxtaposed with the beauty of a chorus that seems wholly celebratory of the existing community and a sad elegiac coda (“they’re gonna build a Walmart heeeere”), plus the title of the album being a reference to the US’s controversial Hope VI urban renewal/social cleansing project would all seem to suggest it’s a song in which she adopts the persona of a callous, yuppie-ish outsider in order to protest Hope VI. Now that’s a fuck of a lot more than goes on in a Catfish and the Bottlemen tune, and it’s only the first track (and I could be completely wrong on its meaning, Harvey hasn’t given any supporting interviews).

http://drownedinsound.com/releases/19365/reviews/4149956
 
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yeah, that was a good review. and the horns are indeed perfect. this album gets better with each listen for me.
 
One listen in, and found it enjoyable. Really need to give it another spin with headphones.

If there one disappointing thing, it's that PJ consistently made pretty big left turns between albums, whereas this seems cut from a very similar cloth as Let England Shake.
 
I need to hear it. I wasn't excited at all about the songs that were released in advance of the album, unfortunately, but I'm re-interested now that so many here are liking it.
 
If there one disappointing thing, it's that PJ consistently made pretty big left turns between albums, whereas this seems cut from a very similar cloth as Let England Shake.

The first three albums strike me as progressions and I think we're seeing that here. Lyrically, at least, I think HSDP is a pretty big risk.

I'm hearing a major latter-day Tom Waits influence on the music of this album. It's a much uglier and more sonically crowded record than its predecessor and that suits the lyrics just fine.
 
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It's very jaunty 80s protest rock in places, then in other places it's as grimy as fuck. The closing song is just a heartbreaker, musically.

I'd say there's a decent chance PJ Harvey pisses off a lot of people with the lyrics. There's no way it is unintentional, how it comes off.
 
Well Let England Shake was the most impenetrable album I have ever listened to (along with I Am Very Far) so let's see how we go.

Edit: Community of Hope is a great start.
 
As far as albums go, I didn't have a lot of trouble with Let England Shake, but very unpopularly (if that is a word) I'll freely confess to never 'getting' To Bring You My Love despite once owning a copy of it. So not a diehard fan by any means.
 
I love everything she's done since Is This Desire? but her records before that don't do much for me. I haven't really given them much of a chance though, and think I'll change that today. Desire, Stories, White Chalk, England, and Hope Six are all masterpieces.



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Listened to the first 3/4 of the album yesterday and thought it was really good :up:
I especially enjoy the rawness of some of the instrumentation in combination with her truly beautiful vocals.
 
Listening to Rid of Me and while raw, tortured rock isn't my thing I'm really enjoying this.

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I like it, but lyrically it doesn't come close to Let England Shake for me.
 
The Wheel is incredible. It and Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln are probably the closest the album actually gets to sounding like Let England Shake.
 
What a great album. Really enjoying The Community of Hope, Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln, The Orange Monkey and The Wheel.
 
This album hadn't connected with me much early on, but listening to a few tracks today while running through a depressed, semi-industrial part of Chicago really brought them into perspective. Damn.
 
This new album got relatively short shrift from the reviewers, who imagine it to be a botched protest album, or something. Silly Polly. I'm not sure what they think is going on. In any case, I've found myself listening to it a lot.

It's not a protest album. It's an art album. It's also compulsively good music.
 
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