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PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2022 2:20 pm 
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The notes on the special edition of "TBYML & the Bsides" state that the instruments are harmonium, organ and keyboard

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PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2022 6:43 pm 
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Mh, so it checks out with the box's notes. That sound is exquisite, so unique i've mistaken it for a jewel like an hurdy gurdy, PJ was really masterful with the harmonica here.Chef's kiss, really. Thank you for the answer.


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2022 6:56 pm 
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You're welcome. I wouldn't have been able to pin down what it was myself, I'm not familiar with those types of instrument


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2022 7:29 pm 
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Just for the avoidance of confusion, a harmonium and a harmonica are not the same thing (but easy to confuse in translation).
I only recently discovered myself that a harmonium looks like this. They are also known as pump organs because of the bellows on the back.
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PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2022 7:45 pm 
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Rob played a harmonium on “Oh My Lover” and you can hear it most prominently at the end, though I think it comes in around the middle of the song. I believe there are other songs Polly’s played a harmonium on, but off the top of my head I can’t remember what they were. A lot of the time when she plays multiple keyboard instruments on a particular song, it’s difficult to discern which is which.


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PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2022 8:29 pm 
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Orange Monkey wrote:
Just for the avoidance of confusion, a harmonium and a harmonica are not the same thing (but easy to confuse in translation).
I only recently discovered myself that a harmonium looks like this. They are also known as pump organs because of the bellows on the back.
Image



Ooooh, that's because i'm a bit dumb and surely ignorant: my eyes saw harmonium and my mind read harmonica, auto-translating it into the italian "fisarmonica" (=accordion, which is used by the PJ Harvey band in a live version of "hardly wait"-and it rocks too). Now i understand why it sounds unique. Thank you.


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PostPosted: Sat Jan 07, 2023 10:30 am 
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The box set has been reviewed in Pitchfork by Zach Schonfeld (8.5 / Best New Reissue):

Quote:
PJ Harvey fans have waited a long time for this: a centralized meeting point for the singer’s many non-album tracks and orphaned gems. Spanning from her early days, fiddling with a 4-track machine that mentor John Parish taught her to use, to her post-’90s reinventions as a pop-rock shapeshifter, antiwar provocateur-slash-autoharp connoisseur, and television composer, this remarkable, 59-song, six-LP compilation doubles as a shadow history of Harvey’s career, charting her metamorphoses through the songs that didn’t make the cut. It also reveals the one constant—an unswerving intensity that distinguished Harvey from her imitators.


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2023 3:42 pm 
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This is a very well-written piece! I do wish to object to his claim that The Phone Song and Stone rank among Polly's "most plodding and heavy-handed compositions". Not cool.


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2023 7:56 pm 
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I kinda agree with him TBH, I don't think these two songs are particularly successful. Very PJ Harvey-by-the-numbers.


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PostPosted: Sun Jan 08, 2023 10:41 pm 
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I like Stone a lot, but I can agree it's not very special. The Phone Song, however, I find particularly moving. "That's a change, changes can happen" and "That's your heart, it can be open" - I think they're great, great lines.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 09, 2023 4:39 am 
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I agree that “The Phone Song” and those specific lyrics are great. I never skip the track when it comes on my Uh Huh Her custom playlist (the only way I ever listen to the album). A lot of people love that song, but I’ve come across just as many fans praising “Stone” which I don’t think is nearly as good. But neither of them really sound like anything else she’s done to me—@ TheNightingale, which other songs of hers do they call to mind for you?

Whenever these two songs are discussed, I’m just always surprised that we aren’t talking about “Bows & Arrows” or “The Falling” instead — two much, much stronger songs (though I do think “The Falling” sounds like other PJH songs!). “Angel” is the one that I think deserves way more acknowledgment, and I sort of wish it could’ve been placed on the first record in this set to give it proper context as one of her earliest songs. It’s one of my absolute favorites of hers, and no one ever says a word about it.

I haven’t read the Pitchfork review and don’t intend to. Something else in it (or many things) is sure to tick me off.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 6:00 pm 
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I haven't read through the whole thread so this may have been asked already. Just listening to PJ now and it got me wondering why there isn't a stand alone demos version of her b sides album? I guess some of the released songs such as 'Lying In The Sun' possibly are demos themselves, but songs such as 'Memphis' & 'One Time Too Many' for example don't sound like demos so I assume there are/ were earlier versions of them in demo form? Just wondering other people's thoughts on this?

One last thing to add, I wish they'd have included a demo of 'This Wicked Tongue' (assuming there is one!).

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Last edited by wangdangdoodle on Wed Jan 11, 2023 6:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 6:20 pm 
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bruise wrote:
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Wow, how wonderful to have a signed lyric sheet of this song! Did you know which song you would get before it arrived?

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PostPosted: Wed Jan 11, 2023 11:19 pm 
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wangdangdoodle wrote:
I haven't read through the whole thread so this may have been asked already. Just listening to PJ now and it got me wondering why there isn't a stand alone demos version of her b sides album? I guess some of the released songs such as 'Lying In The Sun' possibly are demos themselves, but songs such as 'Memphis' & 'One Time Too Many' for example don't sound like demos so I assume there are/ were earlier versions of them in demo form? Just wondering other people's thoughts on this?

One last thing to add, I wish they'd have included a demo of 'This Wicked Tongue' (assuming there is one!).



My two cents: they are keeping the "door open" to a possible " b-sides, demos and rarities" 2. Keep in mind that, there are some rarities, covers("zaz turned blue" for example) and songs featuring PJ ("come to me", "hit the city", "eyepennies", "crawl home", "airplane blues" and a plethora of others) that have never been collected all in one place. Add to all this the hypothetical demos you mentioned and maybe the "obscure" rarities ( songs we don't even know the name of, forgotten relics of PJ's creative process, something like that), and you'll have in your hands a pretty beefy collection.


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PostPosted: Wed Jan 18, 2023 1:02 am 
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Sebastiano Boina wrote:
PJ commented on the recently released tracks:

Nina in ecstasy:
Quote:
"Nina in Ecstasy"- i had purchased the small but mighty Yamaha QY20 (which i still use today), and here i am finding beauty in the lower octaves and soft flute sounds. "Nina in Ecstasy" sounds like a porn film, maybe it was, but my Nina is also lovely, sad, lost lady looking for her mum


That final statement AHAHAHAHH...




during one of my usual evening marathons of PJ's live performances, i came across an interesting and funny finding. in this "white chalk"-era performance, https://youtu.be/hYLknYDSVw0 , Polly is quite talkative and explains the actual origin of the " Nina in ecstasy" title. quoting from 30:29 bookmark:

Quote:
okay, this is one of my favorite songs, which when i wrote it i didn't like it at all, so i put it on the b-side. But now i really really like it (giggles) and its title came from a porn movie... which i wasn't choosing, i was in a hotel and you know when you flip through... and i just flipped and said "eew, what's that?!" and it was called "Nina in ecstasy". so, often... it's a true story, and that's often where songs come from and i spoke to other writers they say the same, in fact maybe if you are probably writers you'd know it you might see a title or something and think "ugh... that could be a song, Nina in ecstasy" U2 are really good at that because sometimes when you go down the street you go "it's a beautiful day!" and (general laugh) "it's very quiet on new year's day", that's another one " it's all quiet on new year's day", we can keep doing this as the evening goes on we can keep thinking of a few titles of everyday phrases... (couldn't get what the last sentence was)



this changes completely my approach to Polly's post:
Quote:
"Nina in Ecstasy"- i had purchased the small but mighty Yamaha QY20 (which i still use today), and here i am finding beauty in the lower octaves and soft flute sounds. "Nina in Ecstasy" sounds like a porn film, maybe it was, but my Nina is also lovely, sad, lost lady looking for her mum
,
it wasn't an understatement, it wasn't Polly cracking a joke, it was the factual reality on how this song was born. Good Lord what a woman.


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