It Was The Snake!

 

"The Snake," PJ Harvey & John Parish, 1996, Peel Session. Short, not sweet, half way through almost breaks the spell with-- "You salty dog!"-- but in the end the salty aside only helps bring home the sexual furies of Eve's betrayal. Blockbuster post-punk distaff artsong rage. Kim Gordon and Kathleen Hanna and Fiona Apple big fans.   

PJ Harvey: Big Complex Female Voice in a Slight Rock Star Package

Let's begin with "Joe," a Demo from 1992's Dry recordings. The vocal performance, so uncannily assured and unselfconscious, is one thing. Then the duet setting of her effortless vocal heaviness against the abstracted slabs of industrial grunge guitar gives the song demo a post-punk conceptual feel. She's a little package but a powerhouse voice and personality. And I'm not just trying to objectify her with that contrast. It seems integral to her power. Like Iggy Pop's "Five Foot One," the power in her voice taunts those that might underestimate her diminutive frame.  

Dinosaur riff rock gets stomped on and dominated by Ms. Harvey in one of her perhaps underrated periods. It's a boss performance in England in 1998 circa her album Is This Desire? 

"The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore," from 2000's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, my running favorite Harvey album but I need to give some others more attention-Anyway, this number is an absolute rock & roll hall of fame grand salami of a rock single but, I just checked, it didn't chart and she's actually another one not in the official R&R Hall in Cleveland. (More of what's wrong with people and the authorities, I'm telling you!) Harvey doesn't have any big hits but her albums chart okay, a couple top tens. And her audience, or cult, if you prefer, is a sizable alt-rock audience and surely big enough for the Hall's consideration?! Maybe they're still trying to catch up with the '90s? I know how that goes but PJ Harvey is a historic rock star original and past due for serious consideration for recognition by Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. 

Also, by 2000's Stories..., note how in the song "Good Fortune" she's still doing her Smithian vocal stylings, my first critical hesitation with her music back in '92/'93, but now she's tossing this stuff off like she's dancing in the streets, like it ain't no thing. Or it's just another kind of art song style she does, no sweat. Patti gives Bruce "Because The Night." PJ gives a confident nod to Patti while maybe throwing in some Stevie Nicks for good measure. Masterful mistress of the late rock era. 

 More evidence: "When I'm On Ether," from 2007's White Chalk. If not psychedelic, a drug song masterpiece.  

Don't have time to get into it too much but I think Harvey is a tremendously rich source of evidence for the rockist argument. I.e., rock is essentially pop with an oppositional, iconoclastic, counter cultural, and/or anti-commercial streak built in. Its authenticity isn't rooted so much in class as in personality; its "wokeness" is a reflexive antagonism to straight authority. It's "alternative," by definition and in principle. Harvey's art insists on her individual identity while at the same time making use of various musical legacies and traditions. Progressive art song and heavy blues rock, for two. And she's part of a long line, if small club, of shamanistic rock stars with big vocal diva prowess. 

For heaven's sake, PJ Harvey belongs in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame if ever there was or is such a thing?! Not that I have any idea whether or not she would appreciate the honor or even care. Hall of Fames are bs but if you're going to do bs why not show some judgement and try to make your bs count? 

Post-Punk Protest Music

"Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair," PJ Harvey (1991): 

"Gonna Wash That Man Right Out of My Hair." 

Actually, Harvey calls her song "Sheela-Na-Gig," after carved figurines of a naked woman with an exaggerated vulva, architectural grotesques found on cathedrals, castles, and other buildings throughout Europe in the middle ages. Love the esoteric feminist history but had to look it up, of course. I was originally slow on the uptake with Harvey when she first came out in the early 1990s. Both Dry ('92) and Rid of Me ('93) first struck me as too much like Patti Smith. That same melodramatic shamanistic banshee vocalizing thing. Which was such a rock snobby take, no doubt, but for the life of me now I can't hear what a fuss I was making. I mean, sure, there's a vocal styling resemblance but Harvey is way more Sturm und Drang, and way more intensely sexual. Being her own person, like Smith, the power in that, is what Harvey shares most with Smith. Don't try to pigeonhole them too much. They will arrive in their own time and on their own terms. Maybe Harvey was a little bit to the '90s what Smith was to the '70s, rockers, sui generis strong women art rockers. Salute. 

"Leave the Capitol," The Fall (1981): The Fall at an early peak; from The Slates EP. In a fitful nightmare I imagine Mark E. Smith taking down Grump in a battle rap royale, jabbing him with his rat a tat tat militant nonsense, dancing around the Fat Bastard spastically. Never being touched. The TKO'd G crumpling with Smith leering over him, pointing a finger at him, taunting him with the hook here, "Then you know in your brain/LEAVE THE CAPITOL!/EXIT THE ROMAN SHELL!" Over and over. The dream look is Clockwork Orange. No doubt the obtuse ranting lends itself to such fantasy because Smith is a little Trumpy; like one of Elvis Costello's "Two Little Hitlers." Apparently, the song is about Smith wanting to get out of London, to get away from the pop press hype. Post-punk revenge pop. 

(1988): 

"And the mercy seat is waiting

And I think my head is burning

And in a way I'm yearning

To be done with all this measuring of proof.

An eye for an eye

And a tooth for a tooth

And anyway I told the truth

And I'm not afraid to die."