Sorry folks....underwhelmed
I enjoyed the evening as an insight to their work and i suppose it can only be a "one off" type of event but to be honest it gets no where near a live show i'm craving.

_________________
Snetta

I read the book and also I listened all the videos shared from both nights. When I look my journey with Polly's works, all her works improved me somehow. As she tries new areas and works, as a fan, it is affecting me, I guess positively. Even I am a fan, everytime when she produces something, I am not thinking about if I like the work or not. I am just trying to process the work to understand. Because as an artist, I trust her creativity. I trust her that whatever she does, it will afffect me and improve me. As she says at the BBC Radio statement "As an artist, I try to make sense of the world through my work. I just try to get something down - look at it up close, from different angles." Therefore, she provides me various angles. She is the artist, not me, so I should be the one who accommodates myself to her work. Not for herslef, for my self.

Good quality pictures from this event are even more rare than the videos:



http://www.standard.co.uk/goingout/music/the-hollow-of-the-hand-festival-hall-music-review-polly-harvey-is-far-from-hollow-a3088091.html

Here's a longer clip of the wheel
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=NnHlFdUn3vE

Can't stop playing ministry of social affairs in my head, now this song.

Same here!

I've even got the lyrics in my head. i love everything I've heard. I think it could be her best album since stories, which I've actually found a lot of pj fans don't rate that album too highly, but it might be her highest acclaimed one. This album coukd be that way

I am enjoying these songs even more now than I did on the night. I have found this does happen with me though, even with other artists.

I love the fact she song more major chords than she normally does. And her voice does sound the best it has in a long time, which is an odd compliment as I don't ever think it sounded bad.

"Black and white image of PJ with the veil to cover her hair in a mosque where she professes Sufism is perhaps the most surprising" - is this picture appears in the book?
Can't wait for my copy to arrive! [it's already in Moscow, just a couple of days away from me]

^ This picture was shown during the event but is not published in the book. None of the pics in the book show Polly. Maybe we'll see this picture back again next year in the documentary film Seamus Murphy is making about their collaboration.

I don't want to listen to these live performances before I hear the album, but is she still singing primarily in her higher register?

No and yes. She's not singing low, but she's not singing in a falsetto. Her voice is very strong in the songs, quite different from the last two albums. And as others have said, her voice is the best its been in years here. Not that her voice has been bad in the last ten years, but every singer has periods where their voice is less than other times. During the White Chalk era, I think that's her worst vocal years. It was better in 2011, and it sounds better than ever in these clips.

I've listened to all of the new songs at least once so far and "Dollar Dollar" is my favorite. It's so pretty.