By some miracle, you'd be aware

Or "Yes, I am big fan geek for PJ Harvey"

Dear friends,

The Monkey took me to see PJ Harvey at the Beacon last night. Part of me was having geek meltdown and part of me kept sneaking peeks at J, looking to see if he was enjoying it. It was his first time seeing her. Yes, he liked it very much.

Polly Jean Harvey came on stage, all by her lonesome, looking like a Victorian kewpie doll. Her white puffed sleeved dress scrawled in grand black script; her lyrics and her handwriting she explained later. She picked up her guitar and stood in the middle of a cluttered stage set up. Piano strung in lights on one side, amps in the back, various instruments strewn about. It was almost as if we were a family about to witness an impromptu living room recital by the baby of the family, an intense and terrifyingly talented little girl.

She slinked into the opening lines of To Bring You My Love and man oh man, THAT VOICE. I felt like it was lipsynch 'cause it sounded too perfect, too much like the record. It took a second for my ears to get used to the sound of it. I love her.

Sigh.

I know I'm biased, but really, has anyone done more for Blues music lately than PJ Harvey? I'm not talking wack-ass Eric Clapton retreads, I'm talking updating the sound of lamentation so that it sounds powerful and alive. She is so thrillingly in the moment of her songs that it can be a little off-putting to people not used to such passion in their music. Or if they are, it's a different sort of passion, the flowery kind that's more about me! me! me! than trying to tell a story. She makes you feel her belief. When she sang "You know he's gonna be there..." and stretched the last vowels into a dry death rattle, it wasn't pretty, it was captivating.

Screw the 'fork, I think they missed the point. I love White Chalk. It's gorgeous. Yes, it's sad but in a break from her past work, it's the everyday sadness of loss not a fantasy tale of bad men and shamed ladies. As for difficult, it's no harder than any of her other records, since when has she made muzak? I love the sound of this year's Harvey on the album, feather light and high, high, high. She has always tried to do different things with her vocal sound over the years. It's not so much that Harvey refuses to deliver a sound that is her patently her "own" but rather that she doesn't want to be constrained by a vocal sound that never changes. It was startling to hear the White Chalk songs after the openers from To Bring You My Love, which was the deeeeep, alto voiced record; all sludge and darkness. White Chalk, not so much. The opening, coloratura soprano vocalizations of The Devil seemed even more unreal. How can that tiny little person contain so many different voices and have mastery of all of them? HOW?!?

I'm losing the plot aren't I? It was a great show. I loved hearing Snake, haven't seen her play that in ages. The amazing precision of the final four chords of skronk on Man Size was the bomb. I actually giggled involuntarily and I wasn't alone. Never much of a fan of Down By The Water but last night's autoharp-assisted version, less sing-songy, more fragile and sustained was a revelation. The audience sang all the repetitions along with her; "down by the water/my lovely daughter" etc. and they sang softly, cushioning the number with their hum.

My favorite of the night I think was Silence. I do like the recorded version but the bare bones live version had an authority that was deeply moving and cathartic. I don't know the story behind the song but it sounds to me like someone coming to terms with the loss of squandered time. In her delivery last night, every repetition of the ending word "Silence" got stronger until the number became a kind of hymn.

Silence/PJ Harvey (mp3)


PJ Harvey at The Beacon Theater 10/10/2007 Set List

To Bring You My Love
Send His Love To Me
When Under Ether
The Devil
White Chalk
Man-Size
Angelene
Nina (in Ecstacy)
Electric Light
My Beautiful Leah*
Snake
Shame
Big Exit
Down By The Water
Grow Grow Grow
The Mountain
Silence

---

Rid Of Me
Water
The Piano
The Desperate Kingdom of Love

***

M to da P was a couple rows behind me, check out his thoughts on the show at Fluxblog.

Additional eyes and ears...

Music Snobbery
Sentimentalist

Love, D

PS HAPPY JOHN PEEL DAY!

* The drum looped backed tune that the Monkey was referring to when he told me that he "wasn't feeling the hip hop so much." HA HA HA. Love it.

There's blood on my hands

Dear friends,

Polly Jean Harvey makes me feel like I'm ten years-old and reading Emily Brontë for the first time. Somewhere, millions* of miles away, there lived a woman and her days were blue-green and white. When she walked towards her home, she strode through wind-blown grass, purposefully, her face an unreadable mask. Inside her there was a whole other world, one where living without your life, without that which you loved was not some irrational, unsubstantiated fear, but a dead certainty.

I'm not saying this is how I wanted to live; with guys named Heathcliff screaming all over the place and hands coming through windows. But rather that I get a thrill out of that type of haunting tale, of reading and seeing it. I listen to the title track from PJ Harvey's White Chalk and it feels the same way. I'm inside a story I don't quite understand but I'm exhilarated to be there because it is just so vivid. A gossamer lament for a lost childhood from someone who sounds like they're already a ghost.


White Chalk/PJ Harvey (mp3)

Purchase White Chalk by PJ Harvey.

Love, D

* This is not intentional exaggeration. I have a very poor concept of distance. I'm not proud of my ignorance, it's just a fact.

Write it on a piece of paper

Dear friends,

I'm slowly but surely chipping away at all the mixes I owe for various birthdays, holidays and other sundry arrangements that are too complicated to get into. Here are some of the selections.

1. Mix Selection One

Friend X is a cackle and finger point type of gal. She also plays a mean, tippy-toes sneaky geeetarr. And no one does sneak like Polly Jean. I saw PJ Harvey do this song on TV dressed in a fuzzy red sweater mini-dress, her wide crimson lips carefully enunciating all the antics of Automatic Slim and his cronies. It certainly didn't sound "pretty" or make me comfortable but I couldn't stop watching.

Here is that performance:

Wang Dang Doodle/PJ Harvey (video)



I love her covers because she always makes them sound like she wrote 'em. Now if anyone has an mp3 of her doing Captain Beefheart's Dropout Boogie, do send it my way.

Wang Dang Doodle/PJ Harvey (mp3)

Buy The Peel Sessions 1991-2004/PJ Harvey

2. Mix Selection Two

Gonna borrow from this old Soft Communication post if you don't mind:

"I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Four Tet remixes. The song is always stripped down to something breathable and organic. And my ears rejoice, because all of a sudden, a smattering of hidden elements come to the foreground. Like in this case: the bell changes that signal the constant mind-shifts of the song's protagonist."

Kieran Hebden aka Four Tet laughs WITH you, never AT you
I just found out belated birthday boy, Friend Y, runs. This track is meant for his weekend jaunts into Prospect Park. I know he likes the cock rock but something tells me this is a good one to listen to on the dash as the sun peekaboos through the trees.

Skttrbrain (Four Tet Remix)/Radiohead (mp3)

Buy Com Lag (2Plus2IsFive) by Radiohead

3. Mix Selection Three

Friend Z is owed a mix CD for every month since last June. Gulp. Don't ask. I've actually made most of them and am now up to February. Naturally, since that month is for lovers and companies that make cash money off of lovers, I thought I'd theme it up a bit. This selection was played for me by The Monkey. I don't think he was trying to set a mood or anything, he just put it on and started getting his work clothes ready for the next day. Somewhere between the aching, shivering strings and Peter Green's lazily sensual vocal, I was ready to take J behind the middle school and get him pregnant*. Now, that's a song that does its job. Word.

Need Your Love So Bad/Fleetwood Mac (mp3)

Before Linds and Stevie, Peter Green WAS Fleetwood Mac. You might be familiar with a little ditty he wrote called Black Magic Woman that was covered by a guitar player so bad ass he didn't even have to sing in the band named after him? Not that Green was a slouch in the playing department. Watch below.

Like It This Way/Fleetwood Mac (Video)



Buy The Best of Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac/Fleetwood Mac

Love, D

* I'm contractually required to drop Jordanalia every week. Also: "I believe that vampires are the world's greatest golfers but their curse is that they can never prove it."

I'm so glad that I'm an island

Dear friends,

1. It sounds like wind. And it's morning. You are walking along the foggy promenade. The woman whispering in your ear tells you what to do, exactly what to do but also tells you what she would do if she were in your place. Or maybe she's been talking about herself all along and you've become her. No matter, your pace intensifies and becomes a full on run. It is clear you're not going anywhere in particular and you're moving to get this feeling out. That's what the sudden guitar attack is there for. It is there to remind you that change and decision making can be a violent internal affair. And this surely feels like war. You make your choice, set your teeth and resume your walk. Slow down and eventually stop. It turns out what you heard wasn't wind noise at all. It was the sound of all the time you spent trying to make it work and the ghost of that time finally taking its leave.

Emily Haines from Metric* has a voice that can't help but be intimate. Even at her fiercest, she's got a familiar, lilting tone that feels like a friend's hand on your back. So all the things you don't want to hear become more palatable somehow. Empty from Live it Out is song as thought process. One where the feelings involved are so strong, you're half pushed along, half frozen in place.

Empty/Metric (YouSendIt Download)

2. The vaults of Soft Communication

From April 5, 2006…

In darkness with memories

Featuring three live covers:

My World is Empty Without You/I Hear a Symphony/The Afghan Whigs (YouSendIt Download)

Satisfaction/Björk and Polly Jean Harvey (YouSendIt Download)

Go Easy/Beck (YouSendIt Download)

3. Tomorrow a little Boubacar Traoré.

Love, D

* Personal admission #38: I went to see Metric during their last tour. They opened with Empty and while it lost most of its vulnerability, it was still potent. Arch, lithe and lightning quick; Haines was quite a performer. She danced, shot down dudes in the audience shouting I love yous, and played her keyboard all while rocking a spectacularly tight black sheath. Initially, I was down with the punk by way of Vogue posing, after all she could work it AND has the talent to back it up. But later in the show, she started complaining about khakis and why the fuck is everyone wearing khakis in New York. The crowd cheered wildly in response, the way concert crowds do. I looked down at myself, in my usual outfit of rumpled nonchalance, not khakis but jeans and a sweatshirt with a tomato sauce stain, stared around at the various Haines doppelgangers and suddenly felt like getting the fuck outta there. Because no matter how much I love the music, it's hard to swallow fight conformity banter from a skinny, statuesque blonde in designer duds who has just finished singing about whether women are "Are...all designed to be confined." So out I went into the cold and walked home.

What comes is better than what came before

Dear friends,

I've had December '05 as my desk calendar for some time. I think I might change it today but this also means I will have to transfer all the scribbled information I have on it to the new calendar and it's a mess. I'm a mess. Everything is a mess.

Truth is I need a vacation more than I can say. I got fragrant Valentine's roses in various colors on my desk and I'm off to Disneyworld on Saturday for one day and that is all lovely, but I think I need more than that. I need several weeks off somewhere different. Someplace that's not landlocked. Anyone with any suggestions, please pass them onto me.

I'm gonna let the Little Monkey pod do its random thing today but with commentary:

1. Hold on, I'm coming/Sam and Dave

When I was a kid, I bought Sam and Dave's Greatest Hits at the White Plains Woolsworth's on the strength of Soul Man (duh). This particular track must be one of my earliest lip synch favorites. I know, cute kid singing into hairbrush. Not really. I think it would look quite disconcerting to see a kid mouthing the "Reach out to ME for satisfaction gua-ran-teeed" part of this song. Which is why I guess children's music exists. Sigh.

2. If It's Water/The Evens

I have never heard this before. Ever, ever. I must have this because of Contributor Phil who wrote about them here on Soft Communication. I like this. The lady's got a flat affect type singing voice I find strangely fetching. And there's a nice repeated guitar part/groove that's sounds like walking hurriedly through gray streets in winter when you have to make an important cash drop-off. Ok, no one really does this 'cept in movies. But I pretend to do this all the time. To make a very boring walk though Gowanus more interesting, natch.

3. Image Change/Elastica

Truth be told I haven't listened to this album in a while. Last I heard, Justine Frischmann was hosting an architecture show on BBC and mentoring M.I.A on the side. I went to see Elastica live back in the day and it was such a GREAT concert. I remember thinking for a heavy browed woman with no make-up, wearing visibly dirty clothes, Frischmann exuded amazing sexual charisma, charisma that made her gender irrelevant. In that moment, I wished fervently that I had THAT, what she had. Yeah.

Back to the song...the vocals just started after an extended intro. Man, I love Wire and this has one of those double tracked dull intonations found in their later stuff. Not that Elastica and Wire are surprising sentence mates. Didn't they co-write a song on this album or something? As a bone throw settlement after the lawsuit for Connection/Line Up? I'm making shit up again, aren't I?

4. Fu-gee-la (Sly & Robbie mix)/The Fugees

Ha, this is hilarious. (Dances in chair) Right now, I really, really wish I still had my copy of Sly and Robbie present Taxi. That was good Saturday night music.

5. Zig Zag Wanderer/The Rogers Sisters

I might be totally off but weren't these ladies in a 90's indie band called Ruby Falls? Anyone who can confirm or deny*, gets the Covers Mix - part 2. I gotta hand it to these folks for covering Captain Beefheart and still making it sound like another entry into the post punk dance sweepstakes. No rip, I like to dance. Especially to guitars. And coincidentally, the guitars at the end sound very Cure circa Primary. Must find out what effect pedal that is. Sounds corrosive.

6. Human Nature/Michael Jackson

Eh. What? I like this song. If I could ice skate, like professionaly, I would do a routine to this song. With an outfit based on the Thriller jacket design.

7. She's So High/Blur

This songs sounds like falling in love. When your brain is on drugs. And you roll on grass. True story. Not mine.

8. Skttrbrain (Four Tet Remix)/Radiohead

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Four Tet remixes. The song is always stripped down to something breathable and organic. And my ears rejoice, because all of a sudden, a ton of hidden elements come to the foreground. Like in this case: the bell changes that signal the constant mind-shifts of this song's protagonist.

9. Angelene/PJ Harvey

I love crooning along to this song. Polly Jean Harvey infuses her story about a wanton woman and a looming Jesus figure with such a bruised yearning for grace. Listen to the song and try and follow her transition from verses/resigned to chorus/hopeful. Masterful.

Masterful? Oh my god, I'm such a fawner.

10. What She Said/The Smiths

"It took a tattooed boy from Birkenhead/To really, really open her eyes." This is the song that brings a knowing smile to all teens of the outsider persuasion.

11. Mannish Boy/Muddy Waters

I think my favorite moment in The Last Waltz is this performance. Namely, because I love watching the sheer freakin' delight in Robbie Robertson and Co's eyes as they back the man on this. They are so unbelievably psyched and that enthusiasm gets channeled into their rendition. Watch 'em scream. Ain't that a man.

12. I Found a Reason/Yo La Tengo

This is definitely a Valentine's Day week song. And Ira Kaplan sings this cover with closed eyes sincerity. A little rock 'n' roll prayer never hurt no one.

Love, D

Songs to seek: Hold On, I'm Coming/Sam and Dave, If It's Water/The Evens, Image Change/Elastica, Fu-gee-la (Sly & Robbie Mix)/The Fugees, Zig Zag Wanderer/The Rogers Sisters, Human Nature/Michael Jackson, She's So High/Blur, Skttrbrain (Four Tet Remix)/Radiohead, Angelene/PJ Harvey, What She Said/The Smiths, Mannish Boy/Muddy Waters, I Found a Reason/Yo La Tengo

* Not Contributor Tina 'cause she won last time. Sorry T! You're way too on the ball (that's a good thing, ya know.)

Don't you wish you'd never met her

Dear friends,

1. Writing one of those "about me" things for My Space or Friendster makes me batty because how could I possibly list all the music I like? Or all the movies I like? If I try to cram them all in at once I'm pretty much outing myself as an old biddy with ten thousand cats and a vast collection of tiny ceramic shoes. So I try and change it up now and again. I bring this up 'cause Contributor Gill read the favorite music list on My Space and said "Blossom Dearie? YOU like blossom dearie?" And the answer was YES. Yes, I do like Blossom Dearie. She's not necessarily your parent's jazz chanteuse. In my mind, Dearie's not too far away from other girlishly voiced indie singers, albeit one playing jazz. Plus the piano playing! Miles Davis opined once that she was his favorite among jazz musicians which must mean something considering that he wasn't too forthcoming with the compliments.

As an interpreter, she's soft, tentative and not showy. She has a song called Some Other Time where she sings "Oh well.." like a beautiful sigh, you can imagine the shrug of shoulders under a cardigan. Any other singer would've turned that bit into a long extended show-stopping note hold of "Oh weeeeeeeeeeeell", which would have nothing to do with the song but would be applauded vocally. Boo, I say. Ms Dearie is not interested in being more than a whisper, her piano playing does the tougher work. She's the observer. No matter how happy or sad the vocal, she always maintains this air of detachment. Not cool, like Peggy Lee (who's fab and this is no knock) but a cerebral cool, a true diarist's cool. She seems aware that the feelings she's singing about will certainly change and but rather than being tragic about it, she goes for bittersweet.

Confession time: I was 19 when I first bought a Blossom Dearie cd and I bought it 'cause I liked the cover. I thought it looked cute and twee* and it turns out the music inside was pretty cute and twee in it's own fluffy kitten way. At the time, I was still in the fevered, full clutches of my decades-long Ella Fitzgerald obsession so when I first heard Dearie's vocals I was disappointed at how unadorned they were. In time, I came to appreciate their simplicity.

You can approach her two ways, you can look up the new Verve Remixed series which has The Brazilian Girls remixing her version of Cole Porter's Just One Of Those Things. This remix isn't the hottest track ever but it does successfully illustrate how her sparse delivery doesn't appear dated when juxtaposed with sampled beats. OR you can try and find her Brazil-influenced, girly drink hazy What Time Is It Now?. Sinuous Bossa Nova posing as serious "Where is this relationship going?" query.

2. I love Polly Jean Harvey so much that I'm terrified that if I ever met her I would do something even more profoundly stupid than what I usually do when I meet famous rock stars. There might be babbling involved. And possibly tears. or fainting. Yes, I might turn into one of those weeping Japanese teenage girls that are mandatory for all rock documentaries.

I bought Rid Of Me when it came out 'cause it featured prominently in the the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll** that year and her photo intrigued me. I looked at the picture and wondered at how a woman with such intense eyebrows could have a record deal. 'Cause Liz Phair might have been singing about "shocking" female things but she was still a pretty, aerobicsized girly girl with big blue eyes to go with her toned bod. Polly Jean looked like a paper-mache head on a stick; giant eyes, lips, nose balanced on a terrifyingly thin frame. Stereotypical sex appeal was not part of the sell. Intriguing! Plus, she was intense, played her own guitar, she did a weirdo voodoo chant cover of Wang Dang Doodle and Don van Vliet was her favorite artist. I had to find out for myself.

On first listen, I hated Rid Of Me. Passionately. I was so angry 'cause I had no money that year and this was my purchase for the month AND it was basically...METAL! At least that's what I thought at the time. Out of sheer fury at myself for having relied on The Voice (which, coincidentally, I haven't since but not because of that incident), I made myself listen to it every day, at least a few times. listen to it. Inward groan. Listen to it. Outward scream. Etc...

I don't know how or when it happened but somewhere in that month I became violently attached to that record. I came to adore it more than anything I had in my collection. And that hasn't happened to me since. Something about the guitar playing, the deliberate crunch of it. Polly Jean's fearless vocal out on a limb-ness. If iPod's existed back then, the rock version of Man-Size would be most frequently played, followed closely by Rid Of Me. Got my leather boots on? Nice one.

But this isn't about then, 'cause I could go on and on unintelligibly about Harvey's output for quite some time, I wanted to babble about two interesting songs this lady has her mitts on.

First, there's The Mystery of Love written by Harvey for Marianne Faithfull for her new album, Before The Poison (which interestingly, includes not just several Harvey compositions but some from her former paramour and male doppelganger, Nick Cave. boy! I remember fan-girling myself into a frenzy at the thought of them meeting, mating and birthing an entire brood of vampiric children with fantastically deep voices. Then when they actually did get together, I was completely spooked. Maybe that wasn't such a good idea. Try and find the video for their first collaboration, Henry Lee off of Cave's Murder Ballads. They sing moonily to each other and it's so. Freaking. Creepy.). The Mystery Of Love sounds like a Harvey song; it has the rolling, relentless guitar groove. While the melody is seemingly sung by an ancient tree spirit aka Faithfull instead, it does little to erase the author's stylistic stamp.

Secondly, there's Hit The City from Mark Lanegan's really quite good album from last year, Bubblegum. For some reason, I'd never been entirely convinced that Lanegan exists as a frontman. He's there but his vocals seem so removed as if echoing from a distant grunge wasteland. Consequently, he's never made an impression on me but he won me over with this album and particularly, this track. He actually seems to be enjoying himself as he coasts along supported by the deluxe backup vocals of Harvey. Perfect for a sunglass sportin' passenger ride in someone else's car.

3. y'know that rainy day activity where you take a piece of paper & someone draws something in the first part, folds, passes it, someone continues the drawing without seeing the previous effort & so on until the page is filled? in the end the picture itself usually winds up being strangely simpatico. this reminds me of the song going steady by bearsuit. like different panels on an impromptu drawing, the entire tune is experimental without being distancing just fold upon fold adding up to one rollicking theme. I've written about da bears before. they are on my space now. if you belong to that particular organization, add them.

Love, D

* Sometimes purchasing albums for the cover alone can prove inspired, in my case: the wedding present/george best, new order/power, corruption & lies, the kinks/face to face (re-issue). sometimes this does not work, as was the case with brit band modesty blaise (which is also the name of a ridiculous but fun 60's proto-austin powers movie with monica vitti & terence stamp as campy clotheshorses/spies). & no, I don't remember the name of the album, something like...the fabulous world of modesty blaise?

** for some reason though, the voice decided to lump her into angry lesbian music. interesting. maybe they were thrown by the whole pronoun thing. on a side note, boy does it irritate me when people do covers & change pronouns. can't you just BE the voice of the song? ARGH!

songs to seek: some other time/blossom dearie, just one of those things/blossom dearie (remixed by the brazilian girls), what time is it now?/blossom dearie, rid of me/pj harvey, man-size/pj harvey, mystery of love/marianne faithfull, hit the city/mark lanegan, going steady/bearsuit

albums to seek: blossom dearie/blossom dearie sings the songs of comden & green, pj harvey/rid of me, mark lanegan/bubblegum