N°89 PJ HARVEY - JOE

As said in the previous post P.J. Harvey used to be Nick Cave's girlfriend and she also participated on his Murder Ballad album. I didn’t want to take Kylie Minogue since that would be too obvious and I like the P.J. Harvey sound more. Grinderman then again was too much the same as The Bad Seeds and I don’t feel like I could link it my few rules considering.

Polly Jean Harvey is British 43-year old singer-songwriter who got early influences in her life from blues, jazz and rockmusic. Her family is probably where she got the vibes since her mother was an organiser of different jazz concerts. This is when she learned to play the sax and she still does play that instrument from time to time on her albums. Her early career started off in different small bands with names as Polekats and The Stone Weaklings but it never really took off untill she founded her own music brand as PJ Harvey with a few friends-musicians.

The first PJ Harvey single is already 21 years old. This single called ‘Dress’ was the start of a first full album in 1992 called ‘Dry’ . She immediately was named as an upcoming talent by the editor of Rolling Stone magazine. You can’t wish for better advertising. Dry has many punkrock and grunge influences but it also scores with Indie-lovers because of the bluesy sound.

She changed record company a year after and created the beautifull album ‘Rid Of Me’ for which she was rewarded as warm-up for the then scheduled U2-tour. More succes would follow with her third album which was nominated by almost all the major music magazines as album of the year. Rolling Stone magazine even nominated PJ as artis of the year. A new star was definately born. From this moment on she tries the experimental side of music which has now become her trademark. ‘To Bring You My Love’; ‘Is This Desire’ and ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’ should be rated under her experimental music. In between she brings a duet with Nick Cave for is Murder Ballad album. Henry Lee with Nick Cave isn’t her only duet in the nineties. She also has a great song with Radiohead singer Thom Yorke. 

PJ is a gifted musician who learns to play lots of different instruments and on her ‘Uh Huh Her’ albums she plays all but the drums. An intimate solo produced album which is for her a challenge. Crazy enough there’s no title track on this album since she finds it a too powerfull songs to be released. She multi talented and creates another crazy beautifull album with nothing but piano and her voice. ‘White Chalk’ is a piece of nice, crawling under your skin, listening music.

After that it took her four years to create a brand new album but again it was worth the wait. In 2011 was ‘Let England Shake’ released.

I’ve chosen a song from her debut album so you could hear the history her musical style and her voice went through between then and now. I don’t particularly think this is her best album or her best song. I actually picked it a bit random out of the huge amounts of songs she created. The name Joe ties in in different ways to other songs I hope.