PJ Harvey: White Chalk

PJ Harvey has reached that difficult-to-achieve level in her career where she could pretty much record herself taking a dump, and critics and fans would praise her courageous experimentalism.

My first reaction to White Chalk was, "Wow, she pretty much recorded herself taking a dump." But given that I've liked most of what she's released over the years (even the stuff that took a while to sink in), I figured I owed her the benefit of the doubt. So I listened again, and then I listened a few more times.

Music:
The only way I can describe Harvey's sound on this record is to call it modern folk, but that conjures images that aren't at all appropriate. Piano is the dominant instrument, but it's a very basic and stripped down piano, the kind you might expect to hear coming from the living room of a ramshackle house somewhere in Kentucky.

Kentucky. That's actually why I had such a hard time with White Chalk. These songs made me think of Mountain Music of Kentucky, a record whose performances are as naked as music can possibly be. Its happiest moments are snapshots of pure joy, and its haunted moments are so powerful that you can hear the ghosts in speakers.

White Chalk doesn't capture any ghosts or snapshots of joy. Not to say Harvey sounds bad, because she doesn't. She sounds like a rock artist who tried something challenging and difficult, and almost pulled it off. I think she wanted to record a completely naked album, though, and these songs are definitely wearing clothes. Maybe nothing more than an old t-shirt and some stained underwear, but that's a far cry from being naked.

Packaging: n/a (Altered by EPFL)
I understand that the good folks at the Enoch Pratt Free Library need to identify their CDs, but it's really annoying when they put big stickers right over the front cover. The picture seems to be Harvey in a typically unflattering portrait, but this one is interesting because she has the uncomfortable stiffness that a rural woman who is posing for her first photo might possess. Otherwise, the EPFL chopped and mangled and destroyed the rest of the package, so I'm not sure what else might've been there.

Listen if you like: As with much of Harvey's later work, fans of Nick Cave will find something here. This record shares some common ground with Isobel Campbell & Mark Lanegan. Anybody who likes traditional American folk might like this.

If it were food, it'd be: beans and cooked greens. Unfortunately, the ingredients all came from cans and bags at the supermarket, rather than from Mason jars filled with last summer's crop.

PJ Harvey: Uh Huh Her

Unlike the other PJ Harvey albums from the EPFL that I've reviewed here, I'd never heard Uh Huh Her until I checked it out with my handy-dandy library card. Just like the other PJ Harvey albums from the EPFL, Uh Huh Her is pretty awesome.

Music:
Apparently, this is Harvey's attempt to do everything on her own. The credits say she wrote, performed, and produced everything on the album (except for the drums and some backup vocals). For the most part, she did a really good job. The music is aggressive, energetic, and raw, yet it still maintains the nuanced layers of sound that Harvey creates so well. There's really only one stinker: "Who the Fuck?" is a musical throwback to PJ Harvey's debut, which would be fine if the lyrics didn't sound as if they were written by a 13-year-old boy with raging hormones and a limited vocabulary. Otherwise, the songs fit together in a cohesive way that makes this an album rather than merely a collection of songs.

Packaging:
Normally I don't like packages that are centered around photos, but Harvey pulled it off. The liner notes contain a bunch of snapshots that seem to mirror her life as both an artist and a person. There are little notes about the recordings taped over the pictures, and though they're not easy to read, they give insight into her mindset as she made this record. I wish there were lyrics, but looking at the liner notes, I completely understand why they weren't included.

Listen if you like: Cat Power, Patti Smith, Nick Cave. Really, though, listen if you like the darkest and rawest moments of PJ Harvey's catalog.

If it were food, it'd be: Alcohol. You know it'll make you feel like crap, but you just can't resist... especially when you're already feeling a little down.

(Note: When I checked this out, someone who checked the disc out before me left a copy of Steely Dan Aja in the case beneath Uh Huh Her. I think Steely Dan is one of the very worst bands in the history of rock, right up there with New Edition and Sheryl Crow. I left the CD in the case, so whoever checks this one out next gets a free Steely Dan CD. Lucky you.)

PJ Harvey: To Bring You My Love

By the time To Bring You My Love came out, I'd begun to overcome my fear of PJ Harvey. Because of that, checking this one out from the EPFL isn't so much hearing a good album for the first time as it is rediscovering an old friend. And this album is a friend; granted, it's the kind of friend that is angry and scary and drinks too much and makes your loved ones wonder what you see in it, but it's still a friend.

Music:
This album is dark. It's dark in the way that Tom Waits and Nick Cave are dark. Sometimes it's dark in a punk way, sometimes it's dark in a bluesy way, and sometimes it's dark in an almost cabaret way. There's not a lot of joy here. Actually, that's not true, because there is a sense that Harvey enjoys being dark. She sounds like she enjoys both pushing her own boundaries and pushing other people's buttons. One or two of the songs aren't great, but most of them are incredibly strong. Some are creepy, some are dark and some are aggressive, but nearly all of them are powerful.

Packaging:
This cover is especially striking when it's compared to Rid of Me. A dressed and made-up Harvey lies in a pool of water on the cover as if she's dead. On the back of the jacket, she poses in the same gown and make-up. What's interesting is how out-of-place she looks. While I don't know the story behind these pictures, it almost appears as if the record label told her, "Polly, we let you do the ugly pictures on the last album, now you have to give us some diva shots." So she did, but she's so ill-suited to be a diva that these pictures are a giant "screw you" to an industry that says only pretty girls sell records. There's still very little in the way of content, but at least the jacket has some sense of design.

Listen if you like: Nick Cave, Tom Waits

If it were food, it'd be: A piece of fried chicken and a large black coffee at a hole-in-the-wall diner in the middle of the night on a long and tiring car ride through the South in the summertime.

PJ Harvey: Rid of Me

When Rid of Me came out, I hated it. I liked my female vocalists to possess angelic voices that were sad and mopey. A dash of sexy didn't hurt, as long as there wasn't too much sexy. The sexy couldn't outweigh the sad, if you know what I'm saying.

Needless to say, Polly Harvey freaked me out back then. She didn't sound sad, and she certainly wasn't angelic. Honestly, her moaning and her groaning was kinda scary. She didn't weep about doomed relationships, she wailed about them. She didn't quietly celebrate her soft femininity, she raged about it. All the while, the band was way too busy kicking ass to waste time strumming guitars over pretty piano chords.

I've grown up a bit since then, so when I checked out Rid of Me from the EPFL, I was ready to tackle it with ears that weren't afraid of raw emotion. It's a good thing, because there's a lot of raw emotion on this album. Coupled with the raw production, it makes for a pretty raw album.

And that's good. The rawness here is the kind of rawness that the musical world needs. I wish there were more of this kind of rawness in music. It's the kind of thing that grabs you by the throat (or by the ears, I guess), shakes you, and says, "Hey, motherfucker, I'm alive and I'm feeling some shit, and you're gonna hear me out."

Music:
Rid of Me may not be as good as it's been made out to be over the years, but it's still pretty awesome. Steve Albini's production captures the band's raw energy without making them sound small or sloppy. The dynamics are excellent, and of all the quiet/loud/quiet bands that sprouted during the early '90s (including Nirvana), none of them captured musical extremes as well as PJ Harvey did on the song "Rid of Me." The album is somewhat repetitive, and they probably could've ditched tracks 2-5. The opening song is incredible, though, and the second half of the album is so unstoppable that I'm disappointed when it ends.

Packaging:
There's nothing pretty about the photos of Polly Harvey. I hated them 15 years ago, but I love them today. The lighting and shading are completely unflattering, and remind me of the American Apparel ad campaigns. (Why does a clothing company market their wares (wears?) in a way that is, at least in my opinion, completely unsexy? Obviously they understand something I don't, because I bet they make way more money with their "unsexy" ad campaigns than I make with my library blog. Anyway.) If the jacket contained more than song titles and credits -- or at least if they were presented in a remotely interesting way -- the packaging would've gotten a higher score.

Listen if you like: Nirvana, The Kills, The Pixies, Cat Power, Patti Smith

If it were food, it'd be: A shot of tequila, straight up with no lime or salt or any of that other nonsense that people do to ruin the sweet bite of tequila.