The Garden, a PJ Harvey Discussion Site

UHH

..... not that its 'worst' in anyway, rather, i dont chose to listen to it much.

Having said that, i dont listen to Dry often either, but its still very relevant to me and in context of its release, it was inatley relevent

i am sad that so many people say White Chalk, as this is such an important album i think, and definatly among my favourites and so ... harsh, minimal and etheral

i have to say ... LES ... is possibly the Polly album that i have fallen most in love with, i feel profoundly excited by it. Battleship Hill has got to be one her finest songs ...

i needed some new music in my life

now i have it

Doesn't count probably but I barely ever listen to A Woman a Man Walked By.

It had good moments ("Black Hearted Love", "Cracks in the Canvas", "The Soldier", the title song) but it just was a big experimental mess mostly?

Didn't love it.

can't imagine i'd be giving let england shake as much time as i have if it wasn't by polly

Hello, I am a new member here. If there are people from the bjork.com forum here, I am the same "Kueken" as over there .

I'm actually not listening to PJ Harvey for a long time yet. Although I bought "White Chalk" only a few months after its release, I didn't really care too much about it at first. I guess it started about half a year or a year ago when I became really obsessed with "Is This Desire?". Therefore, I don't own every release yet and have yet to buy the "side project" albums (4-track demos, Dance Hall At Louse Point, A Woman A Man Walked By).

Although I wouldn't say that PJ Harvey made a "bad" album, my pick for the worst one would probably be "Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea". It has really nice and catchy songs, which I enjoy listening on their own as part of a playlist or something. I especially adore "Horses In My Dreams". But I don't really enjoy the album as a whole. The problem is the production here. It is by far the loudest (most compressed) album of hers and after three or four songs in a row of the albums my ears start to get tired quickly. I think I only managed to listen to the whole album only two or three times so far.

Then I needed quite a long time (actually years) to really get into "White Chalk". I always liked the songs, but it took me some time to really kind of step into its universe. But now I adore this album, too.

Kueken

Gotta invoke my right to the Fifth Amendment here, lol! No seriously, I've been racking my brain over the coals for over a week & no dice. If this were anyone but PJ Harvey I'd be able to do it for sure, but I've grown up with her music. Over 12 years now I've been a fan, can still pop any one of the albums in on any given day (depends on my mood) & it remains as poignant and fresh as the day I first heard it.

CLBella wrote:can't imagine i'd be giving let england shake as much time as i have if it wasn't by polly

I agree, that's the benchmark i set.If it wasn't PJ then would i give it a second listen. Let England Shake is growing on me and has already had more listening time than White Chalk.

I have been a huge PJ-fan for little more than a year - very compact period of time listening intensely to her complete oeuvre... album by album.
My litmus test for taking in new music (anno pj), is: do I want to, nay, need to hear this or that again (Thom Yorke's Eraser, Tori Amos solo, Drop Kick Murphies XD, Sibelius' violin concerto have made the cut). I believe that PJ-standards has set the bar that high - to me, LES is not lowering the measure

oh, and the "worst": UHH - for its unevenness. But I put it on all the time anyways

Well, I have a confession to make.

I've just listened to Let England Shake and I think it's her worst album ever. I loved White Chalk, contrary to certain negative reviews. I love all her albums -- except for this one.

Am I in the minority here?

I don't like her voice in it (and she has the sexiest female voice ever), and I think that there's too much going on -- too many sounds all mushily layered over one another, including the echoey effects on her voice. I feel as if nothing sounds clear, nothing stands out. Every song sounds the same and it bores me. Also, the tone of voice she sings the songs with doesn't match the subject matter, and that too sort of puts me off. It's like a choir of five-year-olds singing about sex or something -- just the tone, the higher pitch. I realise it could be argued that it's a jarring contrast and blah blah blah, but it just doesn't work for me.

Sorry -- I really feel bad about this, because I love her, but I just don't like this album.

It's (Let England Shake) probably one of my top 3 PJ albums. I'm listening to it endlessly and finding something new to love every time.

Not strictly a PJ album but 'A Woman a Man Walked By' was a fairly flat offering for me. It had Parish's misdirected paws all over it. Although it's possible that the production studio was filling up with carbon monoxide or something.

I can't understand the micro backlash against 'Stories...' in this thread. Surely it's a great guilty pleasure type power-pop offering no?

For me personally, I can see how "Stories" is really appealing and friendly and easy-listening?

But I never felt connected to it. It almost FELT like she was just showing she could do that. Which is fine because obviously she could and she did it well. But it didn't really feel like a LEGITIMATE PJ Harvey record in my honest opinion. Like if I was thinking of everything I experience when I hear her music - I wouldn't associate that album with those feelings.

I was also just in college when it came out and I had been listening to PJ since the early 90's and I had to deal with ALL SORTS of these people who just got into her through that record and like The Gilmore Girls soundtrack or something. Which was annoying! I was happy to be in Polly company but they crunched their noses when I played them her earlier stuff.

Now, that being said, I really do love some of the songs: "Horses in My Dreams" is definitely one of my favorite PJ songs. And "Good Fortune" was pretty amazing, video and all.

She looked great then. so healthy!

Does anyone know whether theese 'charts' from iTunes count the number of downloads?
Because This Mess We're In is scoring pretty high on an 'all-time'-scale (2011-03-11)
May be due to a Thom Yorke-effect

I'm surprised to find White Chalk (the song) on this Top10 list of PJ songs. In my decent opinion it's the worst song on a great album.

I've given 'LES' a few listens but it hasn't gripped me yet so that's my worst album I'm afraid.