PJ Harvey White Chalk Review

PJ Harvey – White Chalk (Island)

In search of her muse Polly Jean Harvey has ditched the stripped down bone dry blues of Huh Huh Huh. In the arch of PJ Harveys career this is nothing new, each record seems to have been a reaction to the previous one, but she has never gone this far out before. Purged are those trademark guitars, missing those deep vocals growls, absent any signs of alternative rock. The results are a brave, honest and terrifying record.

In fear of repeating herself, unwilling to release substandard material, she has abandoned the guitar as a writing tool. These songs where written and performed on the piano. An instrument that is an unfamiliar to her as a healthy diet was to Elvis. The results are a collection of sparse, skeletal songs. This is audio ectoplasm. The material haunted by ghosts, unfulfilled desires, departed lovers and loved ones.

From the first moment you hear Polly sing on this record you aware of the change. Her voice is pitched at the highest point of her range. A floating whisper compared to her usual tone. The backing track just sparse piano notes, a barely audible guitar and restrained drumming.

Lyrical concerns are cryptic, impressionist, allowing the listener to draw the dots to divine the meaning from the dark and broken images. There is loss, regret and a fair degree of guilt hidden amongst the twisted oaks, decaying fallow earth and enveloping darkness

The lead single When Under Ether is a brave choice. Harvey has spoken of how pleased she was that it sounded so odd when played by Zane Lowe on Radio One. That it’s otherworldliness provided such a stark contrast to the lumpen guitar rock that is the programs stock and trade.

The piano melody of the track gently repeats itself as Harvey sings of an operation, probably an abortion, in a hushed drowsy timbre. The description is in the first person but you not sure if its autobiographical or dark fiction. The protagonist is focussed on the human kindness of the staff; it is an unsettling and unusual twist. The theme is of an unwanted child is alluded to throughout the record.

On the gentle acoustic strum of White Chalk there is mention of “Dorset’s white cliffs reach the sea, …unborn child me, scratch my palms there is blood on my hands..”, the guitars are coupled with a banjo and then a set of single hammered piano notes carry the song to a close.

A single vocal pleading “please don’t rapproch me for how empty my life has become..”snaps you awake at the opening of Broken Harp. The clanking of, well broken harp carries the melody before the songs drops to a multi tracked vocal and a organ drone Harvey sings “Something metal tearing my stomach out, if you think ill of me, can you forgive me.” The starkness of the declaration is an electric shock, a high voltage and soulful testimonial.

The brevity of White Chalk, little over half and hour, leaves you breathless and anxious. The ideas crammed into these eleven songs are more than many artist manage in a career. This is a record for the dark nights of the soul. Heaven only knows where PJ Harvey will head next. Will she be able to top the power and precision of this record? I don’t know but I am already desperate to hear her next step forward.

Tony Heywood
©

New Reviews

Have done a few reviews for Music OMH this month.

St Vincent - Marry Me

Annie Clark's debut is a hit and miss affair hamstrung by the over the top production and the juvenile nature of some of the lyrics.

Shearwater - Palo Santo

Oh joy! A record full of ambition,post rock ambient textures, guitar shredding, think the majestic late period Talk Talk. Pure bliss.

Liars - Liars
Loud, proud, obtuse, arty, artful you have to love the liars.

The National - Boxer

The National - Boxer

I was worried when I heard that The National where struggling to follow up the breakthrough success of Alligator. All the bands previous LP’s had been so fluid so natural that I feared that a creative impasse would result in a tedious mess of a record.

The first syncopated piano notes on the opening Fake Empire buries that thought for good. The slow build from a piano, low humming guitar and Matt Berninger’s gorgeous baritone is all restraint. A full minute and half passes before the first drum roll that rattles like a gun shot, another fifteen seconds before the drums properly kick in. Then a burst of brass elevates the song onto another level.

It’s a brave opening, a statement of intent. Boxer isn’t going to be Alligator mark II. They could have written huge guitar anthems and become Coldplay. Thankfully they have minted something darker, fragile, deeper, troubled and glorious. Boxer progressively unfolds as a series of stark tracks, all monochrome guitar shades, intense drum patterns and obtuse melodies. Berninger’s dense lyrics concern themselves with the ennui, the emptiness of urban life. He nails the anomie, the soulless city sickness that seeps through the cracks in the sidewalks.

For all the dark subject matter, this is an uplifting record. Squalor Victoria , is a beautiful collision, of piano, strings and drums that sound like Steven Morris on Unknown Pleasures. Start a War, all chiming guitar refrain and gentle eddy of ambient organ is Johnny Marr produced by Brian Eno. If Burt Jansch was raised in Ohio he may have written the beautiful lament of Racing Like A Pro.

Boxer is a subtle masterpiece. The band are disciplined enough to let the songs breath for themselves. They sound like a 60’s soul band covering Joy Division. Wonderful.

Tony Heywood (C)

First published in Mercury Moon

You Tube Cover of the Week PJ Harvey Dress

You Tube Cover of the Week PJ Harvey Dress

I seem to spend a large amount of my spare time watching music clips on you tube and I have become increasing interested in the rough hewn cover versions that appear on the site.

I will endeavor to bring you my favorite cover each week.

The honour of the Highway Five cover of the week goes to:

djambas cover of PJ Harvey’s Dress

With just her acoustic guitar and a soaring voice djambas strips the song back to its harsh and aching core.

This version of Dress is much closer to the demo version of the song than the one released as a single The conflict between desire and self loathing that forms the centrifugal force of Dress is highlighted perfectly in djambas no thrills cover version.

I am sure Polly would be proud.

Kelly Clarkson - My December Review

Have written a review of Kelly Clarkson's My December over at the wonderful musicomh.com. I was impressed that Kelly managed to get this record out against the pressure from her record company. Life for a former American Idol must be hard and she has had to grow up in public. Its not the worlds greatest break up LP but it does have the correct ingredients, scorn, spite, rage, anger, despair, self doubt with a side order of loathing.

Okay its not Lou Reeds Metal Machine Music or Wolf Eyes but for someone used to producing such softly packaged material its a brave start.

Hats off then to Miss Clarkson.......

My December

Strays Don’t Sleep - Strays Don’t Sleep Review

Strays Don’t Sleep - Strays Don’t Sleep
One Little Indian

Strays Don’t Sleep are an eccentric alliance of two Nashville-based songwriters with a shared love for those doomy Scottish romantics The Blue Nile. Neilson Hubbard and Matthew Ryan have both gained more critical acclaim than record sales in their respective careers, trailing in the wake of the likes of Ryan Adams. Yet on these wonderful nine tracks the pair have ditched the stylised shorthand of the singersongwriter genre. This is much weirder, a splintered, drifting collection of loops, synths, acoustic guitars and quality songs.
This is a cinematic record (there is a set of films on a separate DVD), haunting and ghostly. The songs build from tiny fragments, little keyboard riffs, drum patterns, sparse melodies. They unfold like daylight in winter. The contrast in their respective voices adds interesting counterpoint. Hubbard sounds like Robert Mitchum singing lyrics penned by Sylvia Plath. Ryan’s voice is a little cleaner but has the steely edge of an executioner’s axe. When they intertwine across the minimalist backing tracks the results are stunning.
For Blue Skies is pure musical melancholy. The delicate static drum loops and fractured piano allows room for the pain to flow through. It’s the space, the stillness that carries the emotional weight. The melody is picked out on a lone piano, the notes falling like snow on cedars, the guitar muted and aching, it’s stark undertow dragging you into its depths. Martin Luther Avenue is existentialist dread set to drum machines and guitars. New Years eve ennui set to a plaintive whirling organ informs Cars and History.

Tony Heywood (C)

Myspace Page

Home Page


The Video for the amazing For Blue Skies

Barn Burning Werner Ghost Truck

Werner Ghost Truck
Barn Burning
Tarnished Records

The band’s name, taken from a William Faulkner short story, suits them perfectly. Close your eyes and slowly repeat the name Barn Burning, Barn Burning. What images do those two words conjure in your mind? In the darkness of my post-midnight imagination, I can see images of smoke against night-time skies, the darkness at the edge of town, rural feuding, shallow graves. The name suggests a Twin Peaks landscape, Truman Capote’s Handcarved Coffins scored by American Music Club.

Werner Ghost Truck is a desolate howl into the void. A raging against lives half lived, crippled by small town ennui. It whispers tales of shackled hopes and broken dreams before unleashing guitar fireworks and heart-wrenching melodic twists. It’s a sharp right hand to the blue-collar romanticism of early Bruce Springsteen. This is not born to run, more born to drift. There are glimpses into a stilted world, a world of empty old age, drug addiction and betrayal. There is an urgency here, a desperation to slip the chains that bind you so tightly. A bloodstained desire to escape the limits of geography, of economy, of imagination.

Despite the lyrical gloom these are uplifting songs. The LP was recorded in a large empty house and you can hear the space, the ghostly reverb in the sound. William is a breezy circling acoustic chord sequence with a riff that is prime Peter Buck, a harmonica and then a lone piano briefly echoes the melody. The lyric is a puzzle, a memory trapped inside an old photo, and the debris of life.

The keyboard playing on the whole collection is a joy. There are two fractured piano pieces that link the LP together, ghostly ambient interludes that revolve like dust in the sunlight. The hushed warming tones and organ washes tether the mix like flags at half-mast. Rubicon builds from a set of suspended organ tones, acoustic guitars and rattling percussion. The instruments interplay beautifully, a soaring lead guitar explodes in short bursts of noise as the high hats trash like heavy rain on a drugstore window.

Long Dark Room is six minutes of pure beauty, the pedal steel guitar unfurling like smoke rings in a backroom bar. It’s a dark night of the soul, a struggle towards dawn, with little more than some vinyl records and a bruised heart for company. Robert Fisher from Willard Grant Conspiracy adds his craggy tones and then a series of AM radio signals are mixed into the sound. Its spectral, haunted, perfect.

This is a record that is frozen in a deep winter malaise. A brooding, dark, dissolving mesh of guitars, insistent drumming and starlight melodies. The sound wraps around you in a dense fog of strident acoustics and warming bass-lines. Anthony Loffredio’s vocal has an ache, an undertone of melancholy that drags you into its murky depths. There are touches of alt.country in the sound but this is much more sinister, grittier, loud and tangled.

Imagine Wilco jamming with the creeping dread of The For Carnation, or Joy Division’s dense alienation re-routed via the open highways of America. Startling, one to cherish.

Tony Heywood (c)


First published in Mercury Moon

Barn Burning Website

Tour Dates July 2007

July 2007

Sunday, Jul-15th
Providence, RI @ Jake's Bar & Grille
w/Okkervil River (Jagjaguwar Records)

Monday, Jul-16th
Cambridge, MA @ T.T. the Bear's
w/Jason Isbell (formerly of Drive-By Truckers) and Justin Townes Earle

Saturday, Jul-21st (Anthony Solo)
Providence, RI @ Jake's Bar & Grille
w/a bunch of other bands to celebrate Jake's Anniversary.

Friday, Jul-27th
Washington, DC @ The Red and The Black
w/The Bosch

Saturday, Jul-28th
Providence, RI @ The Penalty Box
w/Returnaround, Chris McCoy & the Gospel, Dead End Armory and Rock Paper Rock

Thirteen Cities - Richmond Fontaine

Thirteen Cities - Richmond Fontaine
El Cortez Records/Décor

After the beautiful dustbowl austerity of previous album The Fitzgerald, Willy Vlautin and cohorts have relocated to the deserts of the Southern USA, residing in Tucson after years in Portland. Their travels south across these arid landscapes provided the inspiration for the songs collected on Thirteen Cities. The album comes with a map to trace out the route that they and the songs followed, a lovely touch in a world where the packaging of music seems to have become an afterthought. It’s the attention to detail, not a word wasted or a music backdrop over-egged, that mark Richmond Fontaine out as something incredibly special.

The brief opening track The Border is all pedal steel and sunrise atmospherics. As it slides into the horn-drenched Moving Home Again, you can hear that the sun-bleached environment has informed the sound of the record. Those Tex Mex masters Calexico and Giant Sand have stirred a little hot burrito sauce into the sound on several tracks and it’s a welcome addition.

Thirteen Cities is much more of a band record that the stripped-back Fitzgerald. There are marvellous little sonic touches, little flourishes that add sparkle to the songs - the rippling guitar figure and organ tones that underpin $87 and A Conscience That Gets Worse the Longer I Go, the haunting harmonica on I Fell into Painting Houses in Phoenix. Capsized has a bouncing, nagging riff, pedal steel sighs and a drum track that sounds like a boxcar heading for the scrap heap. It’s the Band meets Uncle Tupelo, all rustic charm and warped country-pop sensibility.

Vlautin is the heir to the mantle of Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger and therefore Springsteen. These tracks speak for the disaffected, the disenfranchised, those lost on the fringes. A world of McJobs, chasing low-rent dollars on the edges of criminality. This is a bleak vision of the American Dream, scripted by John Steinbeck and illustrated by Edward Hopper.

The lyrics are stripped of metaphor and the allegorical, finding beauty and passion in the mundane. Willy Vlautin’s vocals are as lovingly worn and cracked as the spine of a preacher’s leather-bound bible. The flaws and dusty folds in his voice are testament to his commitment of speaking for the voiceless. Vlautin’s magic is wonderfully demonstrated by the 1:38 of St Ides Parked Cars. In a series of brief images and taut lines, the song conveys fractured relationships, faded dreams and a deep well of hurt. Backed by only the lightest of acoustic guitars and that sonorous voice, it squeezes more ennui and sorrow into this track alone than plenty of bands manage in a whole album.

The Kid From Belmont Street opens in a near silent rush of ghostly febrile guitar whispers and cymbal washes; it has the space, the vacant haunted quality of American Music Club circa California. It’s an alt.country take on the ambient void, the silent humming of dread, the overpowering pressure of silence and endless space.

Lone piano notes and elongated brass notes paint sparse soundscapes that invoke the deadly stillness of the desert at dusk. Lost in This World closes the LP. Against a sparse piano part and vapour trails of guitar, Vlautin sings of being lost in the world, of regrets and fucking up. It’s breathtaking, heartbreaking and one of the most beautiful songs you will hear this year. In the hands of a less talented band the album could have come across as an audio version of the National Geographic written by Howard Zinn. Thankfully, it transcends that bone-dry premise to become something extraordinary.

Tony Heywood ©

First Published in Mercury Moon

This is some footage of Willy Vlautin in a motel room (The perfect setting for him)play acoustic versions of two of the songs on the LP. The two tracks are The Kid From Belmont Street and Capsized.

The Larks - The New American Music Club

This is the myspace page of the new guys in AMC.

The Larks MYSPACE PAGE

There are three tracks on the page. Its a sweet indie pop jangle with sunshine harmonies and some clever musical hooks. Its really not dark enough to be in the same league as classic American Music Club. I am interested to hear how its going to effect or compliment Marks songs. It maybe and case of Vudi meets the textures of West the record that Mark recorded with Peter Buck. Vudi's guitar playing adds so much texture to Mark's songs I am interested to hear how it will play out against a different rhythm section.

American Music Club Return. What a Lark !

From the Merge press release:











FROM MARK EITZEL
June 20, 2007
American Music Club has a new line up.
Vudi - guitar
Sean Hoffman - bass - vocal
Steve Didelot - drum vocal
Mark Eitzel - guitar vocal

AMC moved from the Bay Area to Los Angeles. The original members Danny Pearson(bass) and Tim Mooney (drums) still work in San Francisco and perform in various bands. Danny is releasing a solo record by the end of the year. Mark and Vudi started working with Steve and Sean about a year ago. The chemistry was great and so they continued with the project and called it the MacArthur Park Music Club but
this work eventually became the new AMC record.


Members of the band:

Vudi lives in LA, drives a city bus and also plays with the popular rock band Ariel Pink.

Sean Hoffman is a producer, commercial music maker, ex skate punk and plays all the shredding guitar that you enjoy whilst watching Fox Sports. He also plays guitar in a band called the Larks.

Steve Didelot is a songwriter, drummer, surfer, and a Mathematics teacher in the LA public schools system. He also plays in the Larks

Mark Eitzel still lives in San Francisco, loves the Bay Area but spends a lot of time in Los Angeles. He says he 'loves all the trees' and says Los Angeles is "so "triumph of the will"'.

The new album:

Tentatively called MacArthur Park because Vudi lives in that neighborhood and because we all enjoy the original song by Jimmy Webb.

It will be produced by expert producer Dave Trumfio at his studio called King Size. We are very excited by this....

The overall sound is lighter than on previous AMC recordings. Of course there are many reasons why. 1) AMC refutes the label of 'Emo Pioneers'. For the record they hate Emo and have never been on the soundtrack for any W.B. network show. (yet) 2) Dark music is for people who are healthy enough to take it - and AMC want to appeal to all people - including the sick. 3) Mark Eitzel comments: "What will my neighbors in my retirement community think? How will I charm the nurse that tends to me? I want to fill my mouth with sugar and spit it on everyone when I talk. I want to cover the world with chocolate cake icing."

Yes there is a song about the World Trade Center. But such controversy is nothing new for this 'Right On' political band. Sean (bass) is a right leaning liberal texan who hates NPR and is the proud owner of a Segway. Vudi (guitar) dreams of an imperialist world of powdered wigs and waltz's in ballrooms. Mark (vocals) is a gay communist who once wrote an article: 'How Secure Will Your House Be During The Apocalypse'. Steve (drums) is a Christian activist who only plays in this band because the end times are upon us and what the fuck.
Plans.

The new album should be released in early 2008. When the ice and snow is thick and heavy. When your winter depression finally kicks in. No Christmas or New Years to look forward to - just the iron grip of the cold and the bleak endless news reports on the death we bring to the middle east and to ourselves. Perfect. Merge did much market research and focus group after focus group said this would be the perfect time to release our new record. Of course it will be. After that we tour and bring our own version of American Freedom to a waiting and willing world.

Not sure what to make of AMC with Dan and Tim. The world trade center track hopefully is the amazing Worlds of The World and is about a fucked up night in NYC and just uses the bar at the World Trade Center as a back drop. Its one of my favorite songs of Marks in recent years I hope it shines on the record.