PJ Harvey, Jessie J, And The Post-Pop Character Landscape

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From The Village Voice's Sound of the City blog:

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'If I didn't love the record, I'd be boiling with resentment now as critic after critic fell into line. But it's my favourite album this year too, as much for its command of mood as for its lyrics—the horrible placidness and resignation of "Hanging In The Wire," or the title track's haunted music hall strut. In a year where "atmosphere" was a euphemism for cocooning oneself in production—and there's my answer to Maura's Bon Iver question—Harvey's greatest achievement may have been to summon up the dislocating and uncanny with not much more than an autoharp, a skiffle beat and a handful of samples.

Polly Harvey's songs, of course, weren't anti-war, simply about war—or that was the theory, since her collage of voices built up into an indictment anyway. But whatever resonance they had with the year's events was mostly coincidental. The gravity of protest is, I suspect, felt less by musicians than by critics, who are keen to legitimise the artform by fitting it into wider narrative and letting it stand comparison with history. So my first question to the other panelists—far nearer than I was to the Occupy epicentre—is whether you felt that urge to link songs with events, and whether you gave into it?'

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