Dress Rehearsal

PJ Harvey has a new album just out. Other than one or two tracks from the radio, I’ve not yet heard it, but as I have done with all her records to date, I’ll get to it properly at some point and listen to it from start to finish, uninterrupted by onion chopping or the taxiing of kids, just as PJ would hope for. Ten albums in and Harvey shows no sign of compromise or lack of ideas – the mark of a true original.

She has a whole catalogue worth diving into. From the Patti Smithish Stories From The City to the metallic blooze of Uh Huh Her and the jangling olde worlde and sepia-tinted Let England Shake, Harvey’s output is nothing short of spectacular. Not perhaps instant, not necessarily chart-friendly, not ever the sort of music that’s worried itself with the fads and fashions of the day…and all the more urgent for it.

I’ve always really liked Dry, her debut album. Now 31 years old, it still thrills, its low-slung channelling of the blues sounding primal and sultry, combative and self-assured. Biblical references rub shoulders with filthy thoughts, gothic and strange and unexpected. The whole record is life laid bare, PJ’s life laid bare, to be more accurate. Harvey flung herself into the recording of it, convinced that it would be her one chance at making an album, and man!, it shows. Her first single, Dress, is a foreshadow of what would come on Dry.

PJ Harvey – Dress

A lone creeping guitar scratches out a rhythm. A snare drum (or possibly a *biscuit tin) dictates the beat. A silvery tambourine rattles haphazardly and the instruments fall into line. A scraping viola tears itself straight outta the grooves of The Velvet Underground And Nico and rips a metre-wide hole in the melody.

PJ sings despairingly about the pitfalls of wearing too-tight dresses, of trying to please the object of her desire even though it’s clear he couldn’t give two hoots about what she’s wearing. A Fall-ish/Pixies-ish one string guitar solo leads us into PJ’s falsetto – there’s not many Harvey tracks where she doesn’t slide up the octaves for dramatic effect – and the whole track now sounds more pressing, more insistent, the viola sawing away at the edges, the jackhammer beat of the rudimentary drum kit pummelling away like Mo Tucker on steroids.

It sounds live, like 3 or 4 musicians playing right in front of you, no fancy Dan production, no vogueish effects, just PJ and her band letting rip before the game is up and she’s ushered out of the studio to make way for another more palatable and chart-friendly artist. Harvey’s longevity would suggest that, thankfully, they knew they were onto something when they let her loose in the studio.

*Bonus Track

Dress Rehearsal!

Here’s the demo of Dress. Just a close-miked Polly and her pheromones, an acoustic guitar for company, occasionally filled out by that same scraping viola and a rough-hewn electric guitar that quite clearly fell off the back of Kurt Cobain’s pick-up truck. Wonderful stuff.

PJ Harvey – Dress (demo)

* that ‘biscuit tin’ comment was a bit unfair. Rob Ellis, PJ’s drummer of choice at the time, is a fantastic polyrhythmic percussionist and his complex patterns belie the simple structures of those early tunes. There’s not a group who wouldn’t be better if Rob was driving them from the back and that’s the truth.