Full back catalogue REISSUES + demos (THSDP 22/03/11)

[BobSimms]

Thanks for posting that. I think it might be this version here:

https://youtu.be/h6lZ_rbhlSY

Re: reissues, I think most people are excited to get the albums (and in some cases their unreleased demos) on vinyl, not CD. And we’re still holding out hope that B-sides and completely unheard songs (like “He’s Just My Type”) will be reissued/ finally released later on vinyl as well.

[DrDark]

I can’t figure out how to attach or upload a picture in this message so it’s on...

I see all of the messages re: reissues and TBYML demos. But all of the releases seem to be much ado about nothing. Most fans and probably everyone here has the 22 track Dry Demonstration CD and from what everyone is saying the TBYML demos are almost identical to the finalized versions. I’m not buying any of it.

Yup, wake me up when she starts releasing B-sides.

Gerri, the img tag works, but you have to upload your jpg (or png) to a hosting service (like imgur.com) first.

Code: Select all

[img]https://i.imgur.com/ZPhgo7n.png[/img]

Unfortunately thegarden forum software doesn't support hosting images itself.

[Cuauhtemoc]

One thing I've just noticed on the official website:

The release will be accompanied by full restorations of the videos for ‘Down By the Water’, ‘To Bring You My Love’, ‘C’mon Billy’ and ‘Send His Love to Me’.

I assume this is a mistake? Unless they're going to unearth a previously-unseen TBYML video?

It's certainly a possibility. There are unreleased videos for Angelene and The Devil. I'd love to see what they came up with for such an iconic song.

So I know it's only 4 days away, but has anyone here heard the remastered version of Dry yet? The demo albums are a cool, little plus, but I'm really interested in hearing the actual studio albums and what they sound like now. I loved the four Dry tracks we got on The Peel Sessions album and I'm hoping the album sounds as cleaned up as they were.

[Romario11]

a couple of old interviews from rocksbackpages.com to accompany the reissues

https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/ ... k-and-roll

Spoiler! :

PJ Harvey: Sex and Bile and Rock and Roll
Jim Arundel, Melody Maker, 8 February 1992

IT'S SUNDAY AFTERNOON, grey and bitter and it looks like rain. Your flatmate, Lisa, and her gangly boyfriend, Ben, are in her room. They're burning incense. Some of its sweet tang has travelled down the hall as far as your bed-sitting room.

You have two panels of the gas fire alight and the sofa is up close to it. The room is tidy. The single bed is made, the duvet is plumped up, the gold coverlet is smoothed out. Your collection of fun-fur jackets is on a rail in the opposite corner. Your stereo is under the window. There's a metallic orange kettle sitting incongruously on top of one of the speakers. You are playing an album of readings-to-music by William Burroughs. It's a present for a friend and you're taping it before you give it to them.

You are dressed, as you often are, entirely in black. You are writing the titles of the album tracks onto the blank cassette box. You are 22 years old. You are P.J.Harvey and you are about to give your fifteenth interview – this time for your first major feature. The doorbell rings.

Can you feel your life changing?

"Yes, definitely. It's getting a lot faster. I'm sure it'll get a lot worse. So far I've managed to cope with it okay, although there are times when I've been really drained, become really ill. I'll just have to make sure I look after myself."

Polly Harvey is staring at a bright future. The three-piece band that bears her name has been visible for less than a year but has already found a cosy niche in the affections of a diverse array of pop pundits – people like John Peel, Loz of Kingmaker, Island Records and your soaraway Maker – not to mention a permanent residence in the indie charts with the magnificent debut single, 'Dress'. Names like Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, Marianne Faithful and Throwing Muses have been evoked. 'Dress' shares something with all of them, its brooding, tensile strength and biting wit focused on the absurdity of the mating ritual: "Must be some way I can dress to please him". Sex and bile and rock and roll. It's been a long while since it was done so well.

The follow-up single, 'Sheela-na-gig' (another fireball of joyous turmoil) is due any minute, to be swiftly followed by the debut album, Dry, both for Too Pure records. And the band is already signed to Island for major label distribution thereafter.

Three of us on this paper realised last week that we'd spent almost a day and a half solidly discussing P.J.Harvey, her songs and her place in the modern swirl. Then we started discussing why we were discussing her so much. We reckoned our excitement stems from an instinctive feeling that this moment in time, this decade, this generation, needs words and sounds like the things she brings. Quite a chance, her timing is perfect. She has the potential to mean a very great deal to a very large number of people. It's just a feeling you have.

Polly Harvey was raised in a Dorset village nine miles from the Yeovil studios where 'Dress' was recorded. Her father makes a living quarrying stone and her mother works with it, carving sculptures and engraving date-stones. Polly, and her older brother Saul, grew up in a house full of blues. Her mother used to arrange for R&B bands to play locally. Musicians were always around. In fact, an extension was built onto the Harvey home to accommodate visiting musicians.

At a show in Salisbury, in a church converted into an arts centre, I am introduced to Mr & Mrs Harvey who have made the 300-mile round trip to see their daughter play in the chilly venue. The first impressions are that mum is the garrulous half of the couple, talkative and youthfully dressed in tee-shirt and printed leggings. She has a soft, animated face. Dad seems to be more of the solid, silent artisan-in-denim type. It's clear that Polly Harvey's dark, angular looks come from his side of the family.

"I had a very stable upbringing," she tells me later. "I suppose you could say it was sheltered, in some ways. The village was very quiet, not even any shops or anything. But my parents are very open and generous and the house was always full of musicians. My parents are pleased that I'm doing music."

P.J.'s interest in playing music began when she started secondary school and took up the saxophone. At 17, when she left school, she had the urge to write songs. The guitar seemed a better instrument to write them on, so she picked one up and taught herself to play. She formed a trio with a bassist and a flautist to play in local pubs and was spotted by a chap named John Parrish who fronted Automatic Limini, an eccentric Bristol-based band centred around his own home-made percussion. He asked her to join the band and share the vocals. She stayed for four years.

"I ended up not singing very much but I was just happy to learn how to play the guitar. I wrote a lot during the time I was with them but my first songs were crap. I was listening to a lot of Irish folk music at the time, so the songs were folky and full of penny whistles and stuff. It was ages before I felt ready to perform my own songs in front of other people."

P.J.Harvey songs are sharp and raw and uplifting. Some people may be jolted by their frankness. Others will give a sigh of relief that a British woman has arrived singing lyrics like, "You leave me so dry" and "Look at these, my child-bearing hips... I'm gonna take these hips to a man that cares..." and sets them to exultant melodies you can't shake off. These songs can punch holes in you life.

Just as the Smiths perked up the Eighties and punk vivified a torpid generation in the decade before them, so P.J.Harvey, the band, does something that makes you think that the future's just arrived – they provide something for those who feel excluded from the rest of pop. Her words can unite all seven sexes. Her music could thrill the most jaded old hippy or the greenest young sprog just cutting his or her teeth on Nirvana. Best of all, it isn't cynical gap-in-the-market plugging, it isn't pretentious. It's just what she is.

So can you remember the time one of your songs first clicked and told that you might be ready?

"Yeah, I wrote a song called 'Heaven' which I still like. It was the first one that sounded right to me. The next one I really liked was 'Sheela-na-gig', which I wrote in April '90."

'Sheela-na-gig' is now the new single, recorded for London's smartest young label, Too Pure, who discovered Harvey when she came to play at The White Horse in Hampstead. This is the song with the child-bearing hips in it and the curious line "put money in your idle hole" and a chorus that goes "Sheela-na-gig, Sheela-na-gig/You exhibitionist!"

What can it all mean?

"A Sheela-na-gig is a stone carving found on the side of the churches, like a gargoyle," she explains. "There's a lot of them in Ireland and a few in England. It's usually of a woman crouching down, pulling her vagina open with her hands and grinning and looking mad at the same time.

"People used to touch them if they were infertile. They were thought to be able to ward off demons, too. There are several different translations – 'holy woman of god', 'Sheila on her hunkers' and 'the idle hole'. I liked the image – the combination of pulling yourself apart and laughing at the same time – I wanted that sense of humour in the song."

There's also a quotation from South Pacific, the famous line: "I'm gonna wash that man right out of my hair..."

"Yes, I heard that and it had the humorous feel I wanted, so I put it in. I was trying to wash somebody out of my hair at the time, too.

"The song's a collection of different moments between lovers. I suppose it's about being able to laugh at yourself in relationships. There's some anger there but, for me, it's a funny song. I wasn't intending it to be a feminist song or anything. I wanted it to have several sides."

Does it seem odd to have beery lads moshing to these songs at gigs?

"That's great. I love that. That makes it work. If people like it then it doesn't matter what their reasons are, as long as they're getting pleasure from it. If it makes them jump up and down or cry or hit one another, that's fine." She giggles at the idea.

So do you feel people will jump to conclusions about your songs and assume that 'Sheela' is a feminist call to arms or something?

"I hope they don't. I wish I hadn't used the word 'feminist' earlier on..."

If you hadn't, I would have.

"Yeah, well, I don't think of myself as a feminist and I don't like that word. I'm not conscious of doing anything as a woman, it's just me, it's not because I'm female."

So you don't feel disadvantaged as a woman?

"No, not at all. There are a lot of advantages."

Such as?

She pauses for about 20 seconds.

"People do treat you differently if you're a woman. It shouldn't be like that, but people do react in a different way. It has crossed my mind that it has made it easier, that maybe people wouldn't be so interested in this band if it weren't fronted by a woman. But the lyrics – the things I'm singing – I can't think of any man singing an equivalent."

Yeah. It's not in the nature of cocky male rockers to sing "you leave me limp" or something, and certainly not without sounding vicious about it. P.J.Harvey's yearning, soulful style – although wedded to wild guitars – isn't really approached by the grumpy boys bands, the breezy buzzpoppers or the gratingly cheery chart-rockers. Women (and Americans) seem to be the only daring ones these days, the only ones not just content to blur their troubles away. The Babes and Hole are startling, so is Silverfish's 'Hips Tits Lips Power' and The Sugarcubes' 'Hit'. These are records that represent a passionate alternative to the numb dumbness most of the lads are dishing up.

"I think it's up to women to get their act together and do something," says Polly, when the subject of the maleness of the music biz comes up. "Don't just moan, 'Oh it's such a male dominated area.' Get on and do it."

Okay, so we can board up the (pejoratively intended) pigeonholes marked "bitch-core" or "dyke-rock" or "androgynous neo-lad axe-wank". Harvey isn't on a crusade. She is neither wimping-out nor coming over all unapproachably bad-assed.

She just wants to sing what she feels.

Which is the toughest order of all, of course.

Polly Harvey has had enough of talking. As I'm packing away my tape machine she shows me the catalogue of an exhibition featuring Andre Serrano, creator of the infamous "Piss Christ", a picture of the crucifixion suspended in a glass case filled with the artist's urine. Under the illustration is written:

"There's nothing wrong with provocative art. I hope to do something that shocks even myself."

"That's what I'd like to do," she says. "In fact, I've done it. It's a song called 'Rid Of Me'. Would you like to hear it?"

She puts on the tape and I listen to it while she goes for a piss.

In the kettle on top of the stereo.

https://www.rocksbackpages.com/Library/ ... isco-dream

Spoiler! :

PJ Harvey: Harvey's Frisco Dream
Max Bell, Vox, November 1992

PJ Harvey hit the states for a lightening tour and took it by storm. "It's like a film," says Polly. "I think they're a bit scared of me."

PJ HARVEY have come a long way in a short while. Only last year Polly was weighing up a degree course at St Martin's School Of Art against a full-time musical career. She supplemented her income playing solo gigs in tiny pubs, and performed as a duo with original bassist Ian Olliver, at low-key venues like the Opera On The Green, Shepherds Bush. The daughter of a stonemason and a sculptress, she laid down her chisel and began writing songs like 'Sheela Na Gig', which was inspired by a style of Celtic gargoyle depicting a grinning woman holding open her vagina. A demo came to Island's attention in early '91, but Polly stood by her word-of-mouth contract with tiny indie label Too Pure, and slowly built a following that showed a devotion comparable to the Smiths' early fan club.

Now signed to Island, with a second album lined up for release some time early in the New Year, PJ Harvey have come to America. Not to see America, you must understand, but to let America see them.

It's 9.30am, San Francisco, and in the grounds of the Phoenix Hotel a bored employee trawls a swimming pool, its interior allegedly painted by Andy Warhol. At the side of the pool, a warmly-wrapped-up Polly Jean Harvey is racking her jet-lagged brains for a rock 'n' roll anecdote. Even though the PJ Harvey experience is visiting America for the first time, playing five cities in six days, she hits a blank; cradling her coffee, she fiddles with a ring and some first impressions. "America," she muses, "is just like being in a film. It doesn't feel at all real. I thought I'd hate it because of my distorted view of the place from TV and movies, but it's actually like that."

As if to emphasise this, a member of the entourage wanders past clutching one of three film scripts that have been thrown at her since she arrived on the West Coast. This one is rumoured to star Johnny Depp; Polly's been offered an acting role. She seems amused at the prospect but nothing shakes her equilibrium. The concerts the band have already played on the East Coast have been, she reckons, "Just alright. Nothing special. The best night so far was in Seattle at the Off Ramp, when my amp blew up."

This is more like it. Excess, debauchery, faulty electronic equipment. There were riots, I imagine. Apparently not. "I spoke to the audience for a bit and then we carried on. They listened very hard."

Polly, who is wearing a combat jacket, DMs and a shirt that shouts "Punk Rock — Visualise World Fear," ruminates on her debut performance at New York's premier musical toilet, CBGB's — home of the No Wave; launching pad for The Ramones, Patti Smith, Television, Blondie and assorted Bowery bums.

"Yeurch. That was 'orrible. A real music industry evening. Island Records held a party for us afterwards which was hideous. Shaking hands with people whose names you didn't catch. I stayed ten minutes — I hate dealing with hyped-up people when we've just played crap. I wouldn't mind if they said we were bad. I'd have agreed. But I feel very uncomfortable with our music at the moment. We're here to promote Dry (the band's debut album) when I'm desperate to move on."

PJ insists she won't do any more handshaking. "They can pressurise me all they like but I won't do it. I think they're a bit scared of me. I'd just stop playing, and they can't force me to play, can they?"

But so far Johnny Yank seems mightily impressed with the trio. To coincide with their arrival, the highly influential Billboard devoted its entire page three editorial to the 22-year-old from Corscombe who has just two singles ('Dress' and 'Sheela Na Gig') and one album, Dry, to her name — all recorded at a cost of a mere £2,000 for her former independent label.

Under the banner headline "A Lover's Musical Musing," Billboard froths most
-eloquently about the cerebral and the carnal, the
deeply erotic, the politics
of self-esteem and the nakedness of Harvey's muse.
 Names drop in like eccentric neighbours. Polly 
icons like Andres Serrano
 (of "Piss Christ" fame),
 William Burroughs and
 semiologist Roland Barthes are quoted, while editor-in-chief Timothy "music to my ears" White reminds his readers that Harvey was playing Glenn Miller's tunes on the saxophone as a ten-year-old in the market town of Yeovil.

In the same week, New York Times power critic Jon Pareles devotes more space to PJH's CBGB's show than he does to U2 on the same page, noticing in Harvey "a substance far beyond novelty value". The review's a rave. Money couldn't buy this attention.

Meanwhile, Island honcho Chris Blackwell has made Harvey a priority act on Indigo, Island's new American label. Old lags The Cure, David Byrne and U2 have invited Polly, drummer Rob Ellis and bassman Steven Vaughan to open for them in various lucrative Enormodomes. They declined politely, though not perhaps with the same polish as Polly's hero Captain Beefheart, whose formal letter of refusal to a slot on U2's Zoo Tour extravaganza began: "Dear Bongo…"

"For us it'd be like being thrown to the lions," is Rob's verdict. "We'd rather stick to clubs than try winning over somebody else's audience."

Certainly, Harvey intends to confront and provoke audiences with material whose poetic frankness — menstruation, sexual lubrication, mutilation and conflagration not being exactly everyday musical fare — is matched to skeletal blues. 'Man-Sized', the next single, has been known to reduce listeners to a stunned "Did she really say that?" silence, with lines like: "Cast my eyes and knickers down" over a draggy off-beat and an abrupt "Douse hair in gasoline" finale.

Maximum impact in a minimal frame, Harvey is adamant that "I'd rather you hate what we do than feel you could take it or leave it, though some of it is supposed to be fun. I'm always talking about our sense of humour, but maybe people don't see that. So perhaps it is all very dour and heavy-going. I try to incorporate some slapstick in the dynamics, and an element of shock value so the songs can be exciting and scary." Harvey compares the desired effect to the fairground rides she takes when hiding out at her secret house on the Dorset coast. "It's above a cafe, and next door there's the fairground, and down the road is a circus. All very surreal."

*

All of the second album and much of the third has been written there, far from the madding crowd. Inevitably, frustration is beginning to set in. "It isn't as exciting as when we started. It's work now. Nice work. Trouble is most songs reach their peak pretty early on. By the time you get into the studio you've lost the initial point, and end up singing them just because they're words rather than something you feel. I hate my old songs now. I thought playing them to different audiences here would bring them back to life, but it hasn't. I listened to Dry once after we'd recorded it, and it made me utterly miserable. Cringe-making."

None of the critical praise lavished upon the debut album has impressed its maker. "It made me uncomfortable. We didn't deserve it and neither did the music. It wasn't worthy of the attention and it annoyed me that people treated it like a finished article when it was so rough. I know I can't create perfection, but the more I'm told how good something is, the more I want to raise my standards. There'll be a huge backlash against us soon, I know, and I'm ready for that. I don't care whether they like me or not."

Harvey says she worries about seeming precious, of becoming a prima donna. "I hope people tell me if I start developing a horrible ego. We get letters from people who take us very seriously. Some are quite upsetting. You see how much time someone has spent thinking about… well, me."

This is not so much artistic angst as a normal reaction to being on the sharp end of ludicrous expectations. The girl who not long ago sang along to Duran Duran, Madness, Blondie and The Smiths is now hipper than all of them. True, Harvey is no ingénue, since she'd toured Eastern Europe a few times as a member of eclectic Bristolian combo Automatic Dlamini, and was tough enough to part company with Paul Cox and Richard Roberts, her mentors at Too Pure, and her original manager Mark Vernon, when it was felt a further thrust forward would be beneficial.

Polly says she's looking forward to coming home, to see her parents and resume lessons with the ex-opera singer who lives in her village. Potential stardom is something she shrugs off, but she doesn't mind the musician's itinerant life. "Which is a bit odd, because I haven't come from a rock background. I don't even know what that is. I'm from the country."

[BobSimms]

What a fantastic article that Vox one is. Hadn’t read that one before. Both great, but I’m confused by the bit at the end of the first one, about the teapot (!).

Has anyone got their new Dry yet? Sound quality impressions?

[AineteEkaterini]

This may be the receptacle in question:



I think she was trying to give Jim Arundel the impression that conditions in the flat were so squalid she had to wee in it. She would have needed a funnel, though.

[gaviinj]

Dance Hall announced. Had it in my head ITD would be next so was very excited when an email dropped in announcing the next lot. No demos disc though sadly for this...

https://pjharvey.kontraband.store/produ ... ouse-point

[Cuauhtemoc]

Reissue is faithful to the original recording with vinyl cutting by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering, overseen by John Parish.

So... remastered or not?

[TheNightingale]

Happy to report the Dry vinyl arrived today (I live in Eastern Europe so it took a little longer but thank goodness it finished its journey unscathed) and the quality of the pressing is very good. Quiet, dynamic, with little to no surface noise. The remastering is very subtle and stays true to the original sound. I have never heard this album on vinyl before so I can't compare it to the original pressing, but it sounds great when blasted on big speakers - especially if you'd only been listening to MP3s or streaming versions before (my CD copy went MIA while moving a few years ago).

The LP also includes a code allowing you to download an MP3 or FLAC version of the record.

[zemonsta]

The download version I presume is the original master?

[TheNightingale]

Well I assumed so (I only downloaded the FLACs to my HDD and didn't listen to them) but I've just compared its waveform to a original CD rip and there's a striking difference in volume:



(The upper one is "Oh My Lover" from the 1992 CD, the lower one is the download version accompanying the physical reissue.)

Perhaps tomorrow I'll listen to the downloaded files and have more to say.

[Amnesiac]

The original japanese cd is more dynamic too. I don't think it's a remastered cd. Probably a new EQ with high volume.

[BobSimms]

The original japanese cd is more dynamic too. I don't think it's a remastered cd. Probably a new EQ with high volume.

Isn’t “a new EQ with high volume” a remaster?

My UK copy of the vinyl arrived today. I read about various pressing issues with the US (pressing plant: United) copies, but have heard nothing bad about the UK press. The EU plant that pressed the Dry—Demos LP is also pressing all the UK/EU releases going forward, so I think I’ll import those as well. Heard nothing but good things.

The waveform shared above is quite different from what someone on the Steve Hoffman Forum shared about the Dry .flacs. That person said there was absolutely no difference. Anyway, reports on the vinyl playback have been across the board positive, with listeners remarking about a louder and fuller sound. Now I just gotta buy a new turntable...

[jhj1814]

Anybody know a good online store in the US to order Dance Hall At Louse Point? Surprisingly, it’s not on amazon (yet?) or a site like bullmoose.com which is where I’d had the Dry + Dry Demos delivered from.

[BobSimms]

Deep Discount has it listed. (Amazon does, too, but just not with an option to pre-order it.) It’ll be available widely just like the others, there’s probably just a lag in getting it listed everywhere.

https://www.deepdiscount.com/john-paris ... 2508964879