Review for www.nomoreworkhorse.com
Monday, March 31, 2025
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Wednesday, March 12, 2025
PJ Harvey - Is This Desire?
You could
argue PJ Harvey is one of the most interesting artists of the last 30 years. Her fourth album, released in 1998, was
recorded in collaboration with John Parish.
It starts with the fairly muted Angelene, which unfurls gradually,
building pleasingly to a chorus of “2000 miles away”. There are a couple of
noisier tracks here. The Sky Lit Up
kicks things up on a notch but it’s a quick sub-two minute blast, while the two
minute My Beautiful Leah and Joy are almost industrial-sounding, the latter
featuring gentle clanging before cutting off abruptly.
But for the
most part the album is made of muted, mysterious tracks with little instrumentation
other than a prominent, moody bassline. These
tracks (The Wind, Catherine and Electric Light) are by and large excellent. There are a couple of more ‘traditional-sounding’
PJ Harvey tracks, not guitar-heavy rockers by any means but more fleshed out
tracks. The gnarling A Perfect Day Elise
has a soaring chorus, while The Garden and The River have sweet-sounding piano
and keyboards, the latter also feautiring a nice bit of trumpet.
The relatively
rocking No Girl So Sweet has PJ cutting loose completely on vocals and the
track turns into a glorious racket, but it’s back to muted glory for the title
track where PJ sings sultry and sweetly.
It’s another really high quality collection of songs from PJ Harvey.
Wednesday, March 5, 2025
Monday, March 3, 2025
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