Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 09:19:34 +0200 From: Emiel Efdee Subject: NEW PJ Harvey! Found this info on the Island website: PJ Harvey - Is This Desire 'Is This Desire', the fifth PJ Harvey album, is set for world wide release on September 28th. The album is preceded by a single, A Perfect Day Elise' on September 14th. 'Is This Desire' features 12 original tracks all written by Polly Jean Harvey. Recorded in Dorset and London by Polly Jean Harvey, Flood and Head the album sees her draw upon a number of long standing collaborators; Eric Drew Feldman (Pixies, Captain Beefheart), John Parish with whom she recorded Dance Hall At Louse Point', Joe Gore (Tom Waits), Mick Harvey (The Bad Seeds), and Rob Ellis from the original PJ Harvey line-up. Polly Harvey formed the first incarnation of PJ Harvey in 1991, a bass/drums/guitar trio who immediately impressed critics with their singles Dress' and Sheela-Na-Gig' on the label Too Pure. The album, Dry', followed in February 92 and was hailed as astonishing debut not just in the UK but worldwide with America's Rolling Stone naming Harvey Best Songwriter and Best Female Singer, while Dry' drew a clutch of top album commendations. In 1993, now signed to Island Records, PJ Harvey released Rid Of Me', supported by an extensive world tour which brought increasingly wider audiences. However, by the end of the tour, Polly made the decision to dissolve the original trio and explore working with other musicians. 4-Track Demos' was released in the autumn of 1993 and comprised of 14 songs, a mixture of unreleased material and demos for Rid Of Me'. 'To Bring You My Love' followed in 1995, an eclectic and starkly original album on which, as well as vocals, Harvey played guitar, vibes, percussion and all keyboards. A lengthy world tour followed which saw Harvey adopt an almost theatrical edge to her live performance. She received Mercury Music Prize and two Grammy nominations, 1995 Artist Of The Year' awards from Rolling Stone and Spin and album of the year acknowledements across the board. Harvey has spent the time since then working on a variety of collaborations, including Dance Hall At Louse Point' where her words accompanied the music of John Parish for both an album and live accompaniment to the Mark Bruce Dance Company production of the same name. She also made contributions to records by Pascal Comelade ( Green Eyes' and Love Too Soon'), Nick Cave ( Henry Lee' - Murder Ballads) and Tricky ( Broken Homes' - Angels With Dirty Faces). In addition, she made her acting debut as Mary Magdalene in the forthcoming Hal Hartley movie 'The Book Of Life' and has exhibited sculpture in galleries across the country. PJ Harvey will tour European Festivals throughout the summer. Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 10:15:44 -0700 From: Chris Palacios Subject: Re: thoughts on science The new PJ Harvey single is quite nice. Title track is something about Elise (Sorry my memory is failing. The copy I bought was a double single. Each of the two discs came with the same title track but with 2 songs each disc. For a total of four (b-side?) tracks plus the title track. Sound confusing? It sort of is. What is this thing? the tile track sounded a bit poppy and radio friendly but the b-side tracks were more on the line of what I expect from Polly. Dark and out-there. The title track is most certainly in there. Ryan at Mod Lang said the full length was beautiful. Anyone else have or hear the advance copy? Care to comment on it? Date: Fri, 18 Sep 1998 19:24:23 +0100 From: Andrew Norman Subject: Re: thoughts on science It's the people who compile the UK charts, who have become even more anal about formats than before - you are now limited to three tracks per format (so there's the death of the good old four track EP). Neither of the PJH singles tops ten minutes in total. As Chris says, they are top hole - I really wasn't keen on the last album and after buying the single from the John Parish collaboration didn't bother with the album (and I was a rabid fan for the first couple of albums), the single has restored my faith. While it doesn't really sound much like "Dry" or "Rid of Me", it's back to that sort of simple bluesy style. Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 15:27:27 +0100 From: David Thorpe Subject: NME Review of <> Here's another NME review which seems to miss the mark. I got my plastic copy yesterday and I have to say I'm really impressed. A great deal more raw than <> - P J Harvey's last album proper - but only in terms of the tension rather than the performance, so there's no return to the days of <>. As Louise Gray said in this month's <>, it's easy and lazy journalistic practice to reduce the nature of the songs to Polly Harvey's "difficult character", moreso when one gives a bad review because the material isn't commercial enough. P J HARVEY Is This Desire? (ISLAND RECORDS) Review by James Oldham Rating 6/10 (C) Copyright IPC Magazines, etc. THIS TIME HER PATH DOESN'T seem so clear. It's been three years since PJ Harvey's last album, 'To Bring You My Love', and the reasons behind that are highly debatable. Certainly, 'Is This Desire?' arrives shrouded in rumours of record company interventions and Harvey's own health problems. Whatever the truth is, it seems certain that this time in contrast to her previous effortless reinventions she's been subject to profound doubts and confusions. In her three years away, she's collaborated with Tricky and Nick Cave, as well as diversifying into acting and appearing with an avant-dance troupe while working with John Parrish on his Dance Hall At Louse Point' project. Whether this has contributed to any conflict between artistic desires and commercial expediency, it's hard to say. Her record company would undoubtedly like to see her cross the divide from cult artist to household name (the fact that she's already appeared before the baying crowds of TFI Friday is testimony to that), but if that really is Island's hope, then they're clearly in for an almighty struggle. 'Is This Desire?' is a wilfully uncommercial record. In the same way that the delta blues of To Bring You My Love' marked a radical shift away from the blazing anger of the Steve Albini-produced 'Rid Of Me', 'Is This Desire?' proves an equally shocking experience. Recorded once again with the aid of John Parrish and Flood, it's an album which offers an incredible extremity of sound. Like Tricky's recent Angels With Dirty Faces', it's built around a furiously rhythmical, and frequently ugly, electronic skeleton. Keyboards and guitars are distorted beyond recognition, melody is often disregarded altogether and the songs lurch violently between spectral vocals and the grind of heavy machinery. The single, 'A Perfect Day Elise', will provide you with some idea of what's to come, but even its rumbling momentum and overloaded percussion is no preparation for the brutality of some of the material here. Particularly unpalatable are 'My Beautiful Leah' and 'Joy'; the first, a two-minute dirge of amp-destructing distortion and the latter an almost impenetrable mix of slowed beats and screeched vocals. Although these songs admittedly constitute the outer limits of 'Is This Desire?', they serve as a glaring indication of what this record is trying to achieve. Lyrically as well, this is an oblique and intermittently harrowing affair. Anyone expecting confession or revelation or maybe even a response to Nick Cave's heartfelt missives from his 'The Boatman's Call' album will be disappointed. This is an album tormented by visions of endless women doomed by their own circumstances. In the space of just 40 minutes, we're presented with Angelene, Joy, Leah, Elise, two Catherines and countless other unnamed characters, all united by a sense of their own (almost comical) misfortune. Hence, 'Joy' wants to be blinded, while 'Catherine' is "damned to hell". 'My Beautiful Leah' "only had nightmares and the sadness never lifted" while Catherine Number Two dreams of "children's voices and torture on the wheel" during The Wind'. The constant flicking between third- and first-person narratives suggests these songs may be a more accurate guide to the conception of this record than they first seem. Either way, they more than complement the unsettling tone of their accompaniments, ensuring that, throughout, 'Is This Desire?' is an unflinchingly morose experience. Not that it's an album entirely devoid of beauty. There are at least three songs here that rank alongside the best things Harvey's ever done. The opening 'Angelene', with its brittle piano and sliding guitars, is as darkly beautiful and starkly affecting as anything from 'To Bring You My Love' as is 'The River'. 'The Garden', meanwhile, with its echoing drum-looped percussion and taut rhythm, at least offers some relief from the dense cacophony that surrounds it. These, though, are very much the exceptions. The rest of 'Is This Desire?' shows a unified (and desperately uneasy) continuity of tone. At no point does it reek of hasty compromise or lack of confidence, it appears to be the record Harvey wanted to make from the outset. It's occasionally gruelling uncommerciality might not be what people wanted (or expected), but it remains the sound of PJ Harvey staking out her artistic territory and choosing a path. Sadly, it won't just be her record company who'll be disappointed by her choice. Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 20:08:29 +0100 From: Andrew Norman Subject: Re: NME Review of <> P J Harvey is similarly easy to write off as music for doom-obsessed neurotic teenage goth-girls, yet I'm about as far from that description as you can get and like David I think the new album is a stunning return to form, without being a step backwards or a "return to her roots" or anything of that sort. It would be pushing it to say that one or two of the tracks sound like Bjork, but there's a similar use of rigid electronic rhythms to offset the emotion of her voice on parts of the album. Date: Tue, 29 Sep 1998 19:38:34 PDT From: chad kempfert Subject: pj harvey bonus disc There is a limited edition version of the new pj harvey album "is this desire" which includes a bonus disc. The songs on the bonus disc are from the 2 "a perfect day elise" cd singles. I believe the limited edition is available at Best Buy locations only. Plus it's only $11.99. The album is awesome! You can always count on pj not to sell out. bonus disc 1. a perfect day elise 2. the northwood 3. sweeter than anything 4. the bay 5. instrumental #3 Date: Fri, 4 Dec 1998 11:32:21 +0100 From: Emiel Efdee Subject: New PJ Harvey single... PJ Harvey will release a new single on January 11th: CD1 The Wind Nina In Ecstasy 2 The Faster I Breathe The Further I Go (4 Track Version) CD2 The Wind Rebecca Instrumental #2 7" The Wind Rebecca Nina In Ecstasy 2 Date: Tue, 29 Dec 1998 15:33:20 +0000 From: djt Subject: Top pop records of 1998 P J HARVEY <> (Island) The story goes that this album was supposed to be PJ Harvey's fourth "difficult" album in which she either merges into the mainstream market or stays an obscure angry female with personality problems. Luckily, this is a story which will never be written because <> was a confident and challenging record. With just a handful of familiar collaborators working on this album (Flood and John Parish, for example), it's more than a sum of it's individual parts. Intriguingly, the album's central question attempts to be answered by a string of ballads about characters such as Catherine, Angeline and Joy. But the vauge impression left of them, and the distorted, disjointed music only adds to the mystery.