It is currently Thu Mar 28, 2024 6:43 pm

All times are UTC




Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 5 posts ] 
Author Message
PostPosted: Sat Jan 21, 2017 12:53 pm 
Offline

Joined: Fri Dec 18, 2009 12:15 pm
Posts: 19
Chain Of Keys
The Ministry Of Defence
The Community Of Hope
The Orange Monkey
A Line In The Sand
Let England Shake
The Words That Maketh Murder
The Glorious Land
Written On The Forehead
To Talk To You
Dollar, Dollar
The Devil
The Wheel
The Ministry Of Social Affairs
50ft Queenie
Down By The Water
To Bring You My Love
River Anacostia

Encore:
Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln
The River

Image

Image

Image


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Sun Jan 22, 2017 6:52 pm 
Offline

Joined: Mon Sep 29, 2014 7:36 am
Posts: 2207
https://www.instagram.com/p/BPhuZlVjm0m/

Image


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Tue Jan 24, 2017 12:37 am 
Offline

Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:40 am
Posts: 164
http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/intern ... de/1646256

PJ Harvey leads Melbourne audience in 'sonic crusade'
Updated 23 January 2017, 21:05 AEDT
By Will Huxley


PJ Harvey left the crowd in awe, charged with the performance of a truly transformative show. (Credit: ABC licensed)
It was a clear and beautiful night in Melbourne as the sunset illuminated the sky in yellow and crimson, bats flew overhead and an eclectic crowd gathered for what would be a spiritual experience.

This would be my sixth time watching the ever-evolving artistry of Polly Jean Harvey, and perhaps the biggest venue I've seen her play. At first I was worried about the cavernous space that is the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, but as Harvey and her nine-piece band marched on stage in military precision with a rich and demanding sound expertly choreographed, I knew we were in for a treat that would eclipse any venue that presented this powerhouse performance.

Harvey led her all-male band into a rousing opening that saw her arrive in a plume of black feathers and royal blue, her headpiece evoking a Mohawk and her hand clasping a saxophone like a weapon of musical destruction. Her stiletto boots and impeccable style was secondary to a performance that came as close to performance art as I've often seen in rock music. Harvey evoked these songs with a sense of drama and magnitude that the often politically natured music demanded.

The band was impeccable as the first three tracks from her Grammy-nominated politically minded The Hope Six Demolition Project rang out across the night. The songs told stories of Harvey's recent travels to Afghanistan, Kosovo and Washington DC.

There is a certain power in the contrast of the melodic singalong quality of a song like The Community of Hope, its musical hooks grabbing you while the lyrics describe desolation and poverty.

The band was in total unison and led Harvey in a sonic crusade through the night's spectacular musical journey. The camaraderie between the band could be felt by the tightness of the musicianship. Harvey was joined by long-time collaborators John Parish and Melbourne's ex Bad Seed Mick Harvey.

Anyone who has followed PJ Harvey's career would be well aware of how she has embodied various personas over the years. The wild ferocious rock dominatrix of Rid of Me, the bluesy heroine of To Bring You My Love right through to the haunted English pianist of White Chalk. Harvey has often told stories of desire, longing and pain from a unique perspective.

Clouded in mystery, perhaps these songs are about her own experience? Or women she has imagined and conjured from the past.

Her lyrical work could often be introspective and cryptic, but Harvey has changed focus on her last two albums, starting with the Mercury prize-winning Let England Shake. These are outward-looking albums, which deal with the world around her, focusing on war, politics and history. There is a determined focused quality, which is as strong as I have ever seen with PJ Harvey.

On Saturday night the crowd was electric as she launched into the tracks from Let England Shake. Harvey was exorcising these songs; she is a force to be reckoned with.

When Harvey addressed England and America and their history with war, she sang, "What is the glorious fruit of our land?" and the response sent shivers through my spine and across the crowd — "Its fruit is deformed children". The direct and brutal messages of these lyrics are so palatable because these are such melodic and powerful songs.

There were moments when the tone changed slightly with the haunting The Devil and To Talk to You from her 2010 album White Chalk. The band seemed to hover around Harvey's siren voice on these tracks, which really highlighted the extreme power of her vocals in an eerie and yearning high register.

By the time she played the iconic 50ft Queenie from her sophomore album Rid of Me, the crowd was wild and transfixed. The theatrics that imbued each song was showmanship of the highest order. Harvey threw her arms back and out to the crowd as she wailed the anthemic outro for To Bring You My Love. The crowd could not have had more love for her and her band, and for that moment it seemed there was no equal to her brilliance.

Although Harvey is not an artist that wants to be thought of in terms of gender, and should not be judged in relation to this, it was hard not to feel the significance of her presence on a day when millions of women around the world marched in solidarity making their voices heard against oppression.

Harvey commanded her all-male band and sang and performed with conviction, artistry and passion. Her voice, which echoed across Melbourne's night sky, is one of the most vital and inspirational we have.

The crowd were left in awe, on their feet, charged with the power of a truly transformative show and had the house music not signalled the end of the night, I'm sure they would have cheered for encores till eternity.

This review is of PJ Harvey's show on January 21, 2017, at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Thu Jan 26, 2017 12:05 am 
Offline

Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:40 am
Posts: 164
http://fasterlouder.junkee.com/pj-harve ... 017/870304

Live review: Spirit, power, and the enduring magic of PJ Harvey

by Marcus Teague
25 January 2017
PJ Harvey walks out on stage at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl wrapped in a shock of blue folded fabric, a spike of navy feathers extending from her hair. Long black gloves, long black boots. Holding a sax. She’s embedded in a line of 9 black-clad men, including long-time collaborators Mick Harvey, John Parish and Jean-Marc Butty. There’s also a percussionist, multi-instrumentalist, two guitarists, and another two on brass. So many men. All eyes on her.
As Parish and Butty rattle their drums marching band style, the 10-piece drape themselves across the stage and exhume the swampy intro to ‘Chain of Keys’ from last year’s Hope Six Demolition Project. All those men singing in unison. PJ looking alien, boy-ish and woman, her voice circling above. The collective click into the thudding chug of ‘The Ministry of Defence’, and again the voices like a rising sermon – “Scratched in the wall in / biro pen / this is how the world will end”. Oof. At one point the guy in the middle plays two saxaphones at once. It’s thunderous – this song and the unseen fuse they conjure to propel it. A mauve night sky. PJ in the eye of it, curling her fingers, arching her back, shifting it all into position.

It’s hard to know PJ Harvey. She doesn’t say anything between songs. She doesn’t tell any stories when not singing. When she does – especially in material from her recent two albums, last year’s Hope Six Demolition Project, and 2011’s Let England Shake, (but as far back as her 1992 debut Dry, too) – she casts the personal as political. When she’s not singing or playing sax (she won’t pick up a guitar the whole night) PJ stands aside and slots into the folds of the group. It’s not mysterious or grandstanding, it’s subsuming into the band she’s head and tail of. Like in song, instead of making her own character explicit, she reinvents and retools around it. It’s partly how, beyond more than two decades of consistently remarkable music, her charisma endures.
“PJ crouches and slowly circles, her fingers rippling behind her like fins in the invisible river she so often sings of.”
The set opens with five songs from the latest record, four from the previous. In this expanded configuration the band still somehow sounds lean, now with a grandeur only implied on record. When the men belt out the line, “What if I take my problem to the United Nations?” on ‘The Words That Maketh Murder’, or the duelling percussionists unfurl the clattering chug of ‘The Glorious Land’, or the lead saxophonist girds himself under a solo so physical it verges on comedy, it all seems essential. How did it exist any other way before now? How lucky are we to be witness?
‘Written On The Forehead’ plays out like a elegiac hip-hop track, albeit about towns destroyed by war and fire. This dissonance with PJ’s work is constant – her music and voice so rousing, her lyrics and themes so often bleak. It’s not until the gospel-like ‘Dollar Dollar’ provides the nights spectral, central pivot, that any passing of time first becomes evident. Harvey’s face pleads, lost in the words she can’t find in the song’s narrative of a beggar at her car window, as the band weaves an organ-drenched bed of sound to make the eyes water. The thing verges on spiritual.

Framed by two eerie tracks from 2007 album White Chalk, it invites the beginning of the end. As if by now we weren’t already thinking it. ‘The Wheel’ has the band jamming wildly, finishing in an inwards-facing semi-circle, all singing, “Hey little children don’t you disappear / I heard it was 28,000.” The furious, 24-year old, ‘50 Ft Queenie’ is colossal. During the break in ‘Down By The Water’ PJ crouches and slowly circles, her fingers rippling behind her like fins in the invisible river she so often sings of. In the hands of this great band, ‘To Bring You My Love’ builds to a clouded, ominous crescendo, PJ belting the title over great, shocking booms of brass. Finally they walk off to ‘River Anacostia’, the way they arrived, in single-file formation, singing “Wait in the water / God’s gonna trouble the water,” a cappella over a single drum.
After rapturous applause they all return to play two songs, two good songs – ‘Near The Memorials To Vietnam and Lincoln’ and ‘The River’ – but the spell is already lifting. Words aren’t enough.


Top
 Profile  
 
PostPosted: Tue Jan 31, 2017 2:55 am 
Offline

Joined: Tue Jan 11, 2011 5:40 am
Posts: 164
http://musicfeeds.com.au/news/pj-harvey ... /#/slide/1

PJ Harvey – Sydney Myer Music Bowl, Melbourne 21/01/17

Written by Kirsten Maree on January 23, 2017
This weekend has been tumultuous for Melburnians with unimaginable events on the streets of our city sparking political debate about the state of our justice system, while watching Donald Trump actually take the oval office. We then saw women, and men, take to the streets across the world to march for equality. Through it all we comforted each other with messages about fighting hate and demanding change. This weekend has been a cold reminder about the current state of our world, and PJ Harvey’s show at Melbourne’s Sidney Myer Music Bowl did more to confront than to comfort us.

A solemn opening kicked off the long-awaited show, the British songstress appearing amongst her all male, 9 piece marching band, her first appearance on stage resembling a slow ceremonial march rather than anything close to a jovial greeting for fans. And that decision to centre on the dramatics did not waiver for her entire performance.

Opening with ‘Chain of Keys’ off her new record The Hope Six Demolition Project, Harvey sets the scene for the evening. An unyielding drum beat never lost amongst the blur of the band, a constant reminder that this was a very, very serious performance. Never picking up a guitar, Harvey favours the saxophone throughout. She tends to use it more as a prop than an instrument, holding it high and giving her hands a break from the constant, pointed moves that underscore her more important, theatrical lyrical content.

The band is undoubtedly world class, their perfect individual precision perhaps not given enough room to breathe among the melodies that never quite came together to form an extended, cohesive song. Pretty guitar riffs and interesting tribal openers ultimately all gave way to the same thing, a rigid drum beat, an everything-but-the-kitchen-sink arrangement and a beautiful, floaty Harvey vocal.

The masses swayed along with the impeccably dressed, deadpan band on stage, not a single person uttering a word, forming a cult-like captivation. I saw not one fan singing along, yet at the end of every single song the masses erupted in applause, leaving me thinking I was just not “getting it.” Harvey seemed transfixed, not directly addressing the crowd until well into the second half, and only to introduce her band. Perhaps it was yet another flair of the dramatic I am failing to appreciate, but I was surprised to hear so little dialogue.

That said, Polly Jean can sing, and it’s her vocals – and the many forms they take – that do the talking. The Bjork-Florence hybrid soaring over the chaotic melodies to hypnotise and enthral. While maybe not comfortable, the show was absolutely fascinating. The crowd’s adulation unwavering.



PJ Harvey’s Australian tour dates continue this week.


Top
 Profile  
 
Display posts from previous:  Sort by  
Post new topic Reply to topic  [ 5 posts ] 

All times are UTC


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 32 guests


You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum

Search for:
Jump to: