Album Reviews

This record makes Scott Walker’s last two bleak outings sound positively festive. Harvey has never been an easy listen throughout her decade plus career. She could be dark, abusive, angry, pained, vulnerable, strong and raw-edged, but she could never be easy and she’s not here, as ghostly and pained a musical figure as you’re likely to encounter on record.

She walks the white chalk hills of her hometown Dorset that will “rot my bones,” and, she sings in a somber, disconnected voice, “Scratch my palms/There’s blood on my hands.”

Left alone, “the devil wanders into my soul” she fairly screeches from the top register of her voice on the opening track. She begs for cover from her friend darkness on another song, and on the next (“Grow Grow Grow”) plants a seed only to “trod it in/With my boots I trampled it down.” She acknowledges her destructive nature and then in the last verse sings “Teach me mommy/How to grow/How to catch someone’s fancy/Underneath the twisted oak grove.” Yikes. After a dozen years of making music, who says it’s therapeutic?

There’s a song about drifting off into unconsciousness, begs forgiveness for an empty life on another. On yet another she sings of her unbearable longing for someone who’s rejected her and on another pines for her dead grandmother, wishing to be with her “under the earth.” The album ends with a song of betrayal and Harvey ups the anguish with pained screams not heard on vinyl since John Lennon’s “Mother.”

Are you ready for this? Maybe not. It’s difficult and dark and dreary and drab. It sounds like the cover looks, which is like what those weird polygamist women must really feel like on the inside. Harvey has managed to dress and look like what they look like on the outside!

She plays a very basic, primitive piano instead of the usual guitar on some tracks, consoling herself with simple, repeated chords that keep time more than they drive the melody forward. She also plays guitar, zither, bass and harmonica among other instruments, backed by a team she’s worked with previously who offer sympathetic support.

When I listen to the song “Silence” I am convinced she “borrowed” heavily or was inspired by Sufjan Stevens’ brilliant song about John Wayne Gacey on his Come Feel the Illinoise album (http://www.musicangle.com/album.php?id=359) but maybe not.

Making this downcast and most intimate project come alive is the engineering and production of Mark Ellis A/K/A Flood, whose worked with everyone from U2 to NIN to Depeche Mode. He’s got a bit of Daniel Lanois and Eno in him but he’s his own man, producing a big, open liquid sound, filling the space with a patented echo sound, choice effects and an overlay of naturalness.

Eric Drew Feldman, a name familiar to Captain Beefheart, Pixies and PJ Harvey fans, provides a range of keyboards including Mellotron and Optigon (an unusual optical disc driven device that uses a transparent 12” disc, imprinted with a spiraled optical soundtrack). In fact, I have a rare Optigon disc here somewhere that I can’t use so if Eric has Google Alerts, get this URL and contacts me, I’d be happy to send it to him (if I can find it). Flood gets an awesome keyboard sound!

I know this review makes this sound like a tough listen and it is, but it’s also an achingly person one in an era when so few artists really give it all up. PJ Harvey always gives it up. There are moments of beauty and serenity packed within the confines of a dark package and the recording is truly engaging and special. For the dark ones reading this. And let’s hope PJ lightens up soon! Just a little?