"PJ Harvey Curates" [playlists of her favourite songs]

[Kuk91]

[TheNightingale]

Bob Dylan - River Theme
John Holt - Strange Things
The Doors - Summer's Almost Gone
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band - Where There's Woman
Neil Young - Winterlong
The Doors - Love Street
Howlin' Wolf - Spoonful
Jefferson Airplane - Lather
Robert Frost - A Considerable Speck
Erik Satie - Gnosienne No. 5
Elliott Smith - Say Yes
The Velvet Underground - There She Goes Again
Leonard Cohen - Suzanne
Bob Dylan - Knockin' on Heaven's Door

[KickInside]

Lots of great songs on this one! I think it's my favorite yet.

[zeez]

Just Wow - adore this Tunes so much!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Lather - oh Yeah!!!!!!!!!!!
The Doors - Summer's Almost Gone
The Doors - Love Street
Jefferson Airplane - Lather
Erik Satie - Gnosienne No. 5

[Mr. Badmouth]

I think I can now safely say PJ is my favourite DJ! Fantastic, these playlists!

[Yes_No_Maybe_So]

Surprised she seems to like The Doors so much. Morrison is often knocked as a dreadful poet. At least among those who study poetry. Then again, this is rock music and so lyrics are intertwined with the music. Lyrics that wouldn't necessarily stand on their own can still work within a musical setting.

[TheNightingale]

She said she listened to The Doors a lot while working on Let England Shake, didn't she? Same with The Pogues and The Velvet Underground. She doesn't give interviews anymore but I guess these playlists show that these bands have been in heavy rotation for The Hope Six Demolition Project as well.

[Mr. Badmouth]

Surprised she seems to like The Doors so much. Morrison is often knocked as a dreadful poet. At least among those who study poetry. Then again, this is rock music and so lyrics are intertwined with the music. Lyrics that wouldn't necessarily stand on their own can still work within a musical setting.

I only know that when I listen to The Doors, I seem to focus more on the music rather than the lyrics, but I think they work together. And I know I keep harping on about William Blake, but he was an enormous influence on Jim Morrison, so there's that.

[diogenesagogo]

"But first the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul, is to be expunged: this I shall do, by printing in the infernal method, by corrosives, which in Hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away, and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern."

Wm. Blake : The Marriage Of Heaven & Hell

One of Blake's ideas that knocks me for six (& it happens a lot) is the idea that the soul is not some sort of wispy, insubstantial thing somehow contained inside the body but is in fact something infinitely more complex, & our physical bodies are just that part of it projected into the physical, temporal world. Amazing.

[AineteEkaterini]

I think I can now safely say PJ is my favourite DJ! Fantastic, these playlists!

Strangely, Mr B, I can't stand most of the music she's listing. I'm finding myself thankful that what she makes is so much more interesting than what she listens to! I tell you, if she's in the car, I'm picking the CD.

... the idea that the soul is not some sort of wispy, insubstantial thing ...

CS Lewis had the same kind of idea: in The Great Divorce the grass of heaven is so much more real than that of the earth that it causes humans pain to walk on. That's probably where the resemblance between Lewis and Blake ends, though ...

PS. Just remembered that The Great Divorce is a deliberate riposte to The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, even if it expresses some similar concepts. I see no hint that CSL has had any influence whatever on PJH!

[Mr. Badmouth]

I think I can now safely say PJ is my favourite DJ! Fantastic, these playlists!

Strangely, Mr B, I can't stand most of the music she's listing. I'm finding myself thankful that what she makes is so much more interesting than what she listens to! I tell you, if she's in the car, I'm picking the CD.

Haha, well that's a fair response too! One of the things I love about them is that I can hear how the music she loves has influenced her in a way. But of course I agree that she is more interesting than all of it put together!

[KickInside]

Strangely, Mr B, I can't stand most of the music she's listing. I'm finding myself thankful that what she makes is so much more interesting than what she listens to! I tell you, if she's in the car, I'm picking the CD.

That's funny, some of my favorite artists are on these mixes of hers! The Velvet Underground is easily in my top 3 favorite bands, Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan are two of my favorite male artists and poets, I love the poetry of Robert Frost, and I absolutely love The Doors, Captain Beefheart, Neil Young, Howlin Wolf, Jefferson Airplane, Erik Satie, Elliot Smith, all of them! And that's just this latest playlist! Apparently Polly and I have similar taste

To be completely fair though I'm one of those people who can listen to and enjoy nearly anything.

[TheNightingale]

I like these playlists, too. I love Nina Simone, the Velvet Underground, Nick Cave, Beefheart, the Fall, Pixies, Howlin' Wolf, Leonard Cohen, Low, Micachu, Kate Bush, Robert Wyatt, Elliott Smith, Wilco, Radiohead, Erik Satie etc. The only thing we seem to disagree on is her love of reggae. But I don't mind it much. Girl's got a good taste overall.

[AineteEkaterini]

What surprises me about the playlists is that so much of the music is so conventional; it’s the big classic names of the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, the kind of artists everyone regards as important and influential. Not that Polly hasn’t mentioned a few gems, for which I’m very grateful, and I really ought to persevere with Micachu and the Shapes, but the overall tone is quite predictable. You don’t get much sense – do disagree with me if you think otherwise! – that this is the music library of a radical and innovative artist, which we all know her to be. If this (with the occasional addition of something more out-of-the-ordinary, which we do get glimpses of here) is genuinely the background to her musical imagination, it’s all the more impressive that she's spun such gold from it.

Having said that, of course, this is presumably, in the main, the music she’s listening to to relax, rather than to explore or inform herself: when you do that you tend to retreat to familiar ground. And I know most of what I would choose, on that basis, could easily be dismissed as awful trash! Last night I found myself going from Siouxsie to Beyoncé to The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing, and I would think twice before inflicting any of them on PJH even if she was in my car.

[TheNightingale]

^ I get what you're saying about the playlists being pretty conventional, but as you said - they do seem like little compilations of music she listens to for pleasure (or maybe in the car). Hence the abundance of (agree - obvious) old favourites. She's mentioned listening to plenty of modern classical music while writing White Chalk, as well as exploring music folk from various parts of the world, yet these interests aren't represented in these playlists. It almost seems like she wanted to make them upbeat/fun/pleasant to listen to, like a little gift for her fans. You know, when you make a car playlist for roadtrips with friends you don't put Arvo Part or Diamanda Galas or Swans there.

(Or at least that's how I perceive these curations, maybe I'm totally wrong.)

We also have to remember that since the playlists are available for streaming on two different platforms, she's limited in choices to what's available there. Both Spotify and Apple Music have big libraries but they lack plenty of obscure releases. So even if she wanted to create a mix of her favourite Kosovian folk recordings, they might simple not be available there.

I know she doesn't make the playlists herself - she probably just provides a list and someone from her managment compiles it on Spotify/AM - but who knows what's there on the longlist that can't be found on streaming services.