Music Writing by Carson Arnold
PJ HARVEY: TASTES OF POISON
{I first heard it here: Jo's trailer sits on the edge of a tar road and the woods overlooking a brown lawn of garden hoses. 9 PM. Inside, a hole is cut out in the wall for a door leading into yet another trailer; a few kids hang around the kitchen table smoking, watching the film 8 Mile near a row family photos, waiting for the gang to arrive. Step-dad and ma are out of town for July 4th r&r and Jo's two golden retrievers are already stoned and barking at the moon, pacing back and forth under the table recalling five previous night's of the same silliness. The place has an odd color; the canned food like ancient stuff you find when walking the aisle of an old supermarket during its last day of business. Jo says his dogs are gay (and so are his two little brothers) and plays one kid a game of checkers: "loser drinks a shot, or funnels a beer/do it the tub/easier to clean," he says. Loser glances up and spots "the gang" walking in (sober: "like zombies, ain't they, Jo?") and pulls open the refrigerator. The girls wear sandals and have already purchased fresh College-Campus sweatshirts for next fall; one's a restaurant hostess, another likes skiing, while another digs psychology but has no finger nails left to snap the Zippo. Loser helps her and staggers into Jo's den, crashing on a couch near a passed-out retriever. Loser's head could use Eric Clapton's (right-ear) guitar on "Tales of Brave Ulysses," but there's no Cream, only dusty stacks of Garth Brooks CDs piled on the home stereo-system. One of the girls shriek-- a bottle is opened-- another loser crowned king-- wake up tomorrow-- no one's looking for you.}
As they say, our American Dream. But I wouldn't go there, the price is too deep. Really, I only bring this whole situation up because PJ Harvey's new album, Uh Huh Her, reminds me of it. The odor, the aftermath, the despair, dirt, loneliness, confusion, and if you can believe it (but you gotta trust it first), the truth. It may not be what we want to hear (or self-envision), but at least she's not hiding as any other famous icon in position of trading her audience in, and herself, for the diamond ring. There's love, too, but it's in the reflection of pain. The kind, I'd say, most of us are familiar with. I realize there tends to be a lot of explaining to do when you begin an essay about something entirely non related (editorially), but sometimes rock music moves in very quirky, unpredictable ways-- this is what I got from Uh Huh Her. Sometimes it's not enough to simply "listen" or "hear" anymore, sometimes there's a point where an individual has to take risks and find new, or even old, ramifications in the entertainment-- where perceptions are honed, experience is added on, friends are lost or found, and the music continues to dig deeper and deeper. We can't always define a great song-- suddenly it will just hit us in the middle of a moment when we're surrounded by people who are of no context to its feeling, but perhaps by trying to figure out why, and with a lot of searching, that feeling only advances farther. The song may remain the same, luckily we don't. Maybe we've been reminded of something in PJ Harvey.
But I guess since June 8th (when Uh Her Her was released) I've been attempting to wrap myself in what Harvey's singing about, and so far you've been reading the effects. I hope that's no surprise. I am after all a fan, probably even before critic (which is better?), and have read everybody's summaries, including Greil Marcus who hypothesized she could bring forth a Democratic revolution if the Clintons were to suddenly hear her one night during a sentimental moment of 60s-nostalgia/90s nationalism. There's been a lot of mythic qualities written about her, which I've always assumed were true; the quiet British girl raised on John Lee Hooker and Dylan who unearthed New York City's post-punk movement by playing her cards in the eyes of the audience. But always I like to believe she's an accident in pop culture. The kind of presence everything today is vulnerable by-- a figure they gotta think twice putting on a concert bill for the possibility of distilling the niche, or altering the minds of a crowd perhaps baffled how someone so eternally raw (to reality) could still be a famous rock star without every succumbing to the idyllic power. This is probably hard to comprehend for most of us coming home from work, paying the man, and then seeing what? parts of VH1 is just as depressed as the rest of us? Rid of Me and Dry were all developments to this point-- Harvey in and out of love-- Harvey in multiple personas-- Harvey finding out we were interested-- gambling her innocence while taunting the consequences.
It's what it's come down to. PJ Harvey is probably one of the last women rockers and the first of a new kind. But of what? An idealism or an image? I'm not sure. When she performed on the Tonight's Show on the eve of the album's release (for many, the first time they'd seen her in four years aside from hearing a news-flash that she was listening to a lot of hard-rock), she had cropped her hair from the usual black wave (originally the hair making her famous off Rid of Me's distilling cover) into a jagged Karen O.-style mop. The song she played was "The Letter," a distorted go-lucky cut about compulsion, and I realized due to the success of 2000's Stories from the City Stories from the Sea too many people (including me) were on edge to interpret what Polly Jean was now pushing-- she had given us too much: she was a phenomenon (an earlier album like To Bring You My Love was treated with less expectancy but more as a disciple of the "Alternative," but around '98 does the underrated Is This Desire? attract our interest in Harvey as a "lover"). But can we get any ideal out of it? As we sit here in 2004, the applauds of screaming teens like seagulls on TRL, these are independently up to the musicians, whereas image is purely our responsibility for design; through magazines, fashion, how willing we are to participate in the "clap" of, indeed, TRL. During the sixties it was the opposite: Janis Joplin onstage was clearly "image"-- the camera-man at Monterey Pop filmed only her, head to toe, not Big Brother-- but it took a culture to adopt her as a symbol, icon, and ideal. Switch on the TV today, women appeal as immediate images to one demographic: The Beyonce/Spears bootyfest (bubblegum to the degree where Madonna is practically Victorian literature), our "alternative" Liz Phair (reporting on Bob Costas' TV show her "indie" debut was in fact an anti-indie record against hipsters who frowned when she hummed along to the Top-40), let's not forget the Courtney Love soap, and lastly the Avril Lavigne punk-rawk/shops at the mall/girl next door/but when up against it turns down a seat next to Prince Charles (what I'm basically is there's always been more of an interest when a woman's onstage. We listen more. Imagine The Airplane without Grace Slick, Blondie without Deborah Harry, Sonic Youth without Kim Gordon. Harvey represents a lot of this strength, and by herself).
She is both "image" and "ideal," and it's been a collaborative between her and her audience to feed these levels. I've never had bad things to say about her. Stories From The City was a part-catalyst in getting me into this force we call rock criticism; one of the best rock albums, in my opinion, in the past twenty years, holding court to a variety of visions, love (which she seems to have every other record), sound, method and identity.
So when I first listened to Uh Huh Her I was stunned. She's gone backwards. Who does that? And it took four years? Four years on Island Records, a division of Universal, is a wide chunk of time; in pop music four years can be a career (followed by fifty more of psychotherapy & Hollywood auditions)-- the tabloid printers will only print so much bulk about one face. Uh Huh Her, at large, is pretty good, her most un-seductive, and an artistic triumph over anything classified Rock. Heading the Skip Spence mystique, she performs all the instruments (thanking both Vincent Gallo, supposedly her ex-honey, and Josh Klinghoffer who influenced John Frusciante's last solo album; both similar), along with Don Van Vliet (Captain Beefheart/making you think of the Mojave), setting the production back in the raw, dark elements, grinding her guitar over tracks of voidish despair. It is the work that either took a lifetime to emotionally complete and rectify, or, three nights, coming down from a breakup where earlier that day she informed her label she had nothing, but now held fresh tears to play for (at least that's how it sounds, considering the songs are so lo-fi I can't imagine Harvey, or anybody, inspired to rewind the mix over many years without mulling into contradictions). Stories from the City is another record within a past Harvey probably preferred (singing a duet with Thom Yorke, sounding like Annie Lenox as opposed to Stevie Nicks trapped in a basement). Now she doesn't want us to feel any more comfortable than she is, singing on "Who the Fuck?":Who the fuck/do you think are?/get out/of my head/Who the fuck/do you think you are/coming around/here? (compare to Stories from the City's hit line: I can't believe life is so complex when all I want to do is watch you undress: and we're talking a different language...Then again, if Uh Huh Her was her initial 4-Track Demos what ranking would it be then?).
Take yr pick-- "The Cat On The Wall's" (one of the few drum/chorus rockers) obsession for a star on the radio (chorus: turn off the radio, which could be a double-standard for Turn it up, we're all born lonely!), "The Slow Drug's" addiction/compassion cut, or an acoustic "The Desperate Kingdom of Love"-- they all spell H-u-r-t. I never smiled once listening to it, but I was involved. Harvey makes a point of that. She lets us in on a few secrets-- the inside cover-art filled with photos of herself in bathrooms and rooms posing as numerous identities (characters? the ages of femininity?), and the front cover showing her squinting out of the passenger seat next to a guy driving. It indicates some kind of paradox. Of what I don't know, but I guess I wouldn't be so interested in this album if Harvey didn't want me to find out. Opening the CD, it reads: "let me tell you about my Brief History." Musicians today are usually never that personal. Pasted across the photos are assorted notes for herself: "English accent goddamn it!" "Self portrait photos." "No subtlety." "If struggling with a song, drop out the thing you like the most." "Keep all noises, crushes, hiss and bangs on demos." "Sing pained + girl and quiet."
This is proof she wants us to think. The notes are a plan, perhaps what every songwriter jots down preparing an album, but they're rarely shared unless it's suggesting a "concept." The face of the concept here: Uh Huh Her is a personality crisis shaped into a fine collage; Harvey intentionally putting her "image" as a self-expose; some tracks only a recording of seagulls, another a duet with accordion and guitar; all hoping to deliver a portrait of her mind which very well might be ours. Dysfunction becomes beatific. It may not be as strong as her earlier albums, but at least an honest stab at equating our emotions instead of satisfying our aesthetic demands. Does it mean much?
If you're a regular listener with a fondness for Nico, sure. That's me. I got a whole room loaded with albums that all portray the same human comedy like Uh Huh Her, and they sound the nicest when I'm the most unhappy. But my theory with Harvey is one that's already been written about: The claim she's a blues singer. Okay, obviously not Blues per se, or historically, but a modern blues singer for White People (who share their own Blues, not as a minority, but as a race whose dominance, on return, has an ingrown repression-- from Dickens on down to every Wal-Mart parking lot, we see the effects of a culture under a strange thumb-- cynical from knowledge, lathered by science, DJs ordering our bodies to dance in one order & beat-- and only subliminal voices like Harvey's, somehow slipping through the cracks of the mainstream, can identify with the confusion). The way Skip James cried he'd rather be the devil than "that" woman (a specific person, immediately putting us in "that" woman's shoes as well) are the type of phrases Harvey wishes to haunt on the humable "Shame":
I don't need no eyes or moon {I think}/I don't need no ball and chain/I don't need anything but you/So just shame-shame-shame...
She elevates her voice higher and repeats shame-shame-shame as if pronouncing all the different ways of seeing it, adding, Shame is the shadow of love (shame a word hardly touched in rock music; guilt, denial, prudence, sure-- but shame...). The consequence of things reappear. She plays off the melody, placing herself in a morbid rhythm where we're unable to detect just how she'll harmonize her way out of it. I guess. A second ago a friend called to ask if I was done writing this review yet. I laughed and said I hadn't but how I kept running into new thoughts about Uh Huh Her. In the background, "You Said Something" from Stories from the City played its opening verses:
On a roof top in Brooklyn/One in the morning/Watching the lights flash/In Manhattan/I see five bridges/The Empire State Building/And you said something/That I've never forgotten.
It sounds simple but over a production it sure is tricky. I never noticed these words before. "The Letter" follows the same formula: slowly building up a foundation in the song by delivering short thoughts, images, and fragments that stand as a story and frame for the chorus, arriving with more intensity because we've been led into Harvey's view of the world step-by-step, passion-by-passion-- anything is accepted now. Eye sight. It's how Greta Garbo communicated in silent-film by gestures and facial expressions in replacement of words (morals/tone/script). I'm not saying PJ Harvey is a terrific lyricist, but combined with the music, it's a reversal of Rock's typical modes, usually anticlimactic, indulgent, or careless. I guess I'm saying she understands her listeners. It's what we need.
New shouts? Enough rambling? I'm only trying to get to the iron bottom of this album. Either that, or I'm making excuses for poor quality that I feel signifies a personal crutch in my own life. What else can we say, though? Tell you if it's worth 14.99 or 10.88? Take chances. Uh Huh Her tries...Pop-quiz: Could you keep a secret if I told you...
a) the only way now for PJ Harvey to change her image and win back her critics is to produce a Michael Jackson album.
b) our hope is for the record to get into the hearts of American housewives who, after reawakened by Harvey's eternal "No Child of Mine," persuade their husbands to vote Bush out this coming election.
c) I left the album back in Jo's trailer.
--Carson Arnold - July 25th, 2004