Dry run-through

For whatever reason, most of the casual hits on this site come from people Googling for PJ Harvey. So this post is for all of you. I could have posted the new album. But that’s not what this blog was intended for. I could post the complete Peel Sessions, not just the ones you can buy. But they’re fairly easy to find elsewhere. Instead I’m putting up a few tracks from the first PJ Harvey album, ‘Dry‘, in demo form.

‘Dry’ is by far my favourite PJ album. It sounds garagey, bluesy and down right dirty. Plus it’s got great cello all over it. And ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ is kinda saucy and has a John Cale-esque violin (or is it viola?) scraping away over the top of it. I wore the 12″ out playing it to death. Polly was only 22. She sounded great and looked even better. I always had a feeling that one day she’d go out with me, till she met that bastard Nick Cave. Oh well, her loss.

Anyway. The music. When Dry was released way back in 1991, initial copies came with a free CD, ‘Dry Demonstration’, which had the album in demo form. Here are 3 demos from that disc.

 ‘O Stella’ sounds a wee bit less intense than the album version. More acousticy but no less frantic. She hits all the high notes, plays all the bent string blues notes and the whole thing sounds majestic. And the way she says, “Stella Marie you’re my star” in her West Country accent at the start is quite amusing. ‘Dress’ was one of the singles from the album. On ‘Dry’ it was a cello led rant against leering boys who stare at girls in tight dresses. This version’s got some cello on it too, but not that high in the mix. An electric guitar is double tracked with an acoustic. By the end, the cello’s all over it, the backing vocals have kicked in, the blues riffs have taken over and it sounds like something Kurt Cobain might have demoed for Nevermind. Seriously. The demo version of ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ is a straight run through of the single version that I wore out. Acoustic guitar (again), the high notes (again), the mangled blues riff (again), the “you exhibitionist!” vocal, the whole shebang. In lo-fi.

Extra! Extra! Recorded 29th September 1991, ‘Sheela-Na-Gig’ Peel Session version here. By the way, if you don’t know what a Sheela-Na-Gig is, try here.

Tonight Matthew I’m going to be Joan Baez.