Now that the PJ Harvey reissues, announced back in 2020, are all here, I thought would be a good time to reflect on them.
The reissues of the studio albums was very welcome in 2020. Original pressings were nigh on impossible to find - and prohibitively expensive for most people when they occasionally did pop up. I was lucky to buy them either when they came out, or for the older albums, on eBay before prices sky rocketed. The only one that escaped me was Is This Desire?. Being that most original pressings of Is This Desire? were defective, I never found one for a price that I was willing to pay. Bootleg pressings, particularly of Dry, Rid Of Me and Stories From The City..., popped up in the 2010's. I never bought them, so can't comment on the quality of them, but I think it's safe to assume they weren't ideal. By 2019, a bootleg pressing of Is This Desire? had popped up, so when the official reissues were announced in 2020, they were long overdue.
Overall, I am thrilled with the reissues. And yes, I bought them all, despite only needing Is This Desire? to complete the collection. I couldn't help myself. However, before going any further, I really need to point out that these records need to be cleaned before you play them. Sometimes more than once. I can't stress this enough. It's been an issue with every single one. I've seen mixed reviews for some of them online, and many of the complaints that I also experienced were fixed with a clean (or two or three). Rid Of Me and Is This Desire? were the worst affected (Side Two of ITD? in particular), but they all suffered to some degree. Incidentally, my original pressing of Let England Shake was the same. I always thought it sounded like shit, until I finally learnt about cleaning records. After a clean, it sounded absolutely beautiful. These reissues are no different.
Sound-wise, the reissues are on par with the original pressings. Only the original pressing of Rid Of Me seems to be a little more dynamic than the reissue. I did read somewhere that Rid Of Me was the only PJ Harvey album where the original was an analog pressing, but I can't confirm that (and I'm not going to get into an analog versus digital discussion. These records sound great, so I'm not fussed if they're digitally sourced or not). The Rid Of Me reissue, like all of them, is still excellent. If you're used to hearing these albums on CD or on Spotify/streaming, these records will be a revelation. While I could argue for any of these albums, listen to To Bring You My Love on vinyl and you'll soon realise why us geeks prefer it. When I first got To Bring You My Love on vinyl (which was the 2001 repress and is surprisingly outstanding), I didn't realise that these songs could sound as detailed and dynamic as they do. White Chalk is also worth a mention. The the vinyl versions have a clarity that I didn't think was possible when I first heard the CD.
All of the albums are beautifully (and faithfully) recreated, with the original labels and inserts, down to the super flimsy paper inserts for Dry (though, A Woman A Man Walked By doesn't include the poster that came with the original. Hope Six does). If I were to nitpick, I would have preferred To Bring You My Love to have the original back cover, but this is my one teeny complaint:
Most of the albums are printed on matte card stock, which I really like, even though the glossy covers of the originals are a little more vibrant than the reissues (particularly Dance Hall At Louse Point and Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea). That said, I love the way the reissues look.
I've seen rumblings that some of the albums included download cards, while others did not. None of mine did, save for Dry - Demos. From what I've read, the digital downloads were the standard CD masters, except for Dry, which appears to have been remastered. I've also seen complaints that the albums weren't reissued on CD, though I think CD reissues would have been pointless, aside from the remastered Dry. Even then, CD's are pretty much dead at this point, so I understand why they chose not to do so (though, there was a Japanese CD reissue of Dry in 2021 - if anyone knows if this is the remastered version, do let me know! Post-Covid shipping prices to Australia have stopped me from buying it myself to find out).
Now, onto the demo albums. This was the really exciting part for us die hard PJ Harvey fans. The demos for Dry and Rid Of Me are part of PJ Harvey lore, so I can see why it made sense to release the demos for the subsequent albums - Dry Demonstration and 4-Track Demos have become legendary in their own right. Though, I can't think of any other artist that has released the demos for all of their albums like this as stand alone albums. While it would have been somewhat logical to release the demos packaged with the corresponding album, much like the original Dry Demonstration, I do like that they've all been released separately, not as part of deluxe editions of the albums or anything like that (though, I still want deluxe editions of these albums, please and thank you). I do wonder how much mass appeal there is for the standalone demo albums (I'm already seeing them going cheap around the place), but I am certainly not complaining.
Dry Demonstration and 4-Track Demos represented a very different time in PJ Harvey's evolution. Importantly, PJ Harvey was a band when these demos were recorded. I was intrigued, to say the least, to what these new demos albums would show us. I've met several people over the years who claim to prefer Dry Demonstration and 4-Track Demos to Dry and Rid Of Me. I wondered if these new demo albums would have the same impact. I also wondered how they would be presented. Would they be demos versions of the songs on the album in order, like Dry Demonstration, or would they include songs not included on the album, like 4-Track Demos did?
As it turns out, they followed the Dry formula. For the most part, I think this was the right decision. To Bring You My Love - Demos was the first look we got at the new demo albums (Dry Demonstration was re-branded Dry - Demos, but it's the same record). The first thing that struck me with the To Bring You My Love - Demos was how fully realised the songs were in their demo form. I've read several interviews with Polly Harvey where she says that she starts working on an album in the studio with the demos she's recorded. This became apparent on To Bring You My Love - Demos. There's an impressive amount of the demo elements that ended up on the finished record. This proved to also be true for Is This Desire?, Stories From The City..., Uh Huh Her and White Chalk. The quality of the demos is impressive, even if - now, as their own albums - they aren't quite the statement that 4-Track Demos was.
There are surprises to be had on each demo album. While some feature vocals and instrumentation that are very familiar, others show songs going in other directions. Is This Desire? - Demos features 'Angelene' with the beat from 'My Beautiful Leah' (which Harvey actually played live when touring White Chalk). The album version of 'The Wind' appears to be a remix of the demo, which features Harvey solo on guitar and vocals. It also made me realise that the demo of 'No Girl So Sweet' plays at the end of 'The Faster I Breathe The Further I Go', a b-side (and also a demo) from the album.
The demo for 'Big Exit' sees Harvey singing, "I'm immortal when I'm wit chu", which made me wonder how much input she had to 'Make It Wit Chu', a Queens Of The Stone Age song that was written when Harvey was part of the Desert Sessions in 2003 (she sang backing vocals on the original Desert Sessions recording). The album version of 'Big Exit' - rightly - changes to 'when I'm with you'. 'Make It Wit Chu' was the right place for this inflection, rather than 'Big Exit'. The demo for 'A Place Called Home' features a drum pattern similar to 'We Float', while 'We Float' features a completely different drum pattern, complete with vinyl scratch samples. The demo for 'Kamikaze' sounds like it could have been on 4-Track Demos.
Uh Huh Her - Demos is the only demo album that feels like a missed opportunity. 'No Child Of Mine', 'Cat On The Wall', 'You Come Through' and 'The End' are missing. This is the one demo album that I would have liked to see follow the 4-Track Demos formula. 'No Child Of Mine', probably a demo itself on Uh Huh Her, was the coda to a song that Marianne Faithfull recorded on her wonderful Before The Poison album (on which she collaborated with Harvey on 5 of it's 10 tracks). Apparently, Marianne didn't like the ending of the song, so it ended up on Uh Huh Her. However, when Before The Poison was released a few months after Uh Huh Her, it was on that album also. I guess Marianne changed her mind. I would have loved to have heard Harvey's full demo of 'No Child Of Mine'. With the missing songs, Uh Huh Her - Demos clocks in at a mere 31 minutes - and one of the tracks ('Who The Fuck') had already been released a b-side. Most of the demos that are included are very close to the finished album versions, so it would have been good to fill it out with a few more songs, even if they weren't album tracks. A song called '97°' was a b-side to 'Shame' and featured the music to 'Cat On The Wall' with different lyrics. If this was the demo, it would have been cool to include it, along with some of the albums other b-sides. Two songs, 'Uh Huh Her' and 'Evol' were played live during the tour for the album, but recorded versions have yet to be released - the demos album would have been a great opportunity to do so (live versions were released on a promo CD, but if you want the best versions, seek out the Peel Session versions from 2004 that were also, sadly, left off the official Peel Sessions album). Given that, at the time, Harvey described that she wanted Uh Huh Her to be a 'patchwork quilt' (her words, not mine), it would have been the perfect demo album to not follow the track-by-track formula.
Things gets really interesting on Let England Shake - Demos. While some of the demo albums suggest different directions (Stories..., Is This Desire?) and others shows interesting variations on directions that are already clear (White Chalk, To Bring You My Love), Let England Shake - Demos are the ones I would compare most to Dry Demonstration or 4-Track Demos.. 'Bitter Branches' and 'Hanging In The Wire' were the real surprises here. More than any of the other demos released, I prefer these to the albums versions. I always felt that both tracks slowed the pace of the album somewhat (though, each of Harvey's albums are impeccably sequenced, so I always trust her judgement), however, the demos versions - each considerably different to the final versions - show that the finished versions actually help the pace of the album as a whole. As usual, she was right. She was also right to excise the The Four Lads and Eddie Cochran samples from the albums versions of 'Let England Shake' and 'The Words That Maketh Murder', but boy, are they a hoot to hear on the demos album, especially on 'Murder'. As Pitchfork said in their review of the Let England Shake demos, "Let England Shake - Demos is by far the most enlightening of the bunch. Like an uneven block of stone, it allows us to witness how she chipped away at the album’s singular shape, abandoning ideas that might have lessened the songs’ impact". The same can be said for The Hope Six Demolition Project - Demos, but the demos for Let England Shake are the clear winners. As I said, I'm not sure who the target audience was for the demos albums (presumably the hard core fans, such as yours truly), but if you're a casual fan and only listen to one of the demos albums, make sure it's Let England Shake - Demos.
To say that I am happy with these reissues would be a massive understatement. Finally, in 2022, anyone can walk into a record store and buy a vinyl copy of Rid Of Me. Or White Chalk. Or Is This Desire? (or Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, if you really must - just don't stop there). And that's how it should be.
Being the insatiably rapid fan, of course, the big question is, what next? While there have been a few soundtrack releases in the six years since The Hope Six Demolition Project (and I do recommend her All About Eve soundtrack - not included in the reissues, but still easily available on vinyl), it has been a long wait for a new album. An article in The Guardian about her new book, Orlam, let slip that she's planning on putting a new record out next year. I'll believe it when I see it, but I am quietly optimistic.
The other issue, that the vinyl reissues don't rectify (as wonderful as they are), is the staggering amount of non-album tracks that PJ Harvey has put out over the last 30 years. When interviewed about Dance Hall At Louse Point, and the reissues, John Parish stated that, 'I might be wrong, but I think there might be some kind of b-sides and rarities thing to come out as another package at some point down the line'. As I pointed out when blogging The B-Sides CD from 1995, a b-sides and rarities compilation is long overdue. If you're a PJ Harvey fan, and you've only heard the studio albums, I feel like you're only getting half the story. There was a three volume vinyl bootleg series of b-sides, titled Maniac, Harder and The Falling, released in the 2010's, that teased what an official b-sides compilation series could look like, but they ultimately fell short (many of the tracks sounded mp3 sourced, complete with poor vinyl rips of vinyl only tracks). I have long fantasised about a PJ Harvey collection in the same vein as Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds' B-Side & Rarities compilation (a 3-CD collection from 2005 that was expanded to a 7-LP vinyl box set earlier this year). There are many obscure treasures lurking around PJ Harvey's vast back catalogue, from outstanding b-sides ('Nina In Ecstasy', '66 Promises', 'I'll Be Waiting', 'Reeling', 'Sweeter Than Anything', every To Bring You My Love b-side), to soundtrack songs ('Naked Cousin', 'Nickel Under The Foot', 'An Acre Of Land'), to songs yet to see a proper release ('Primed And Ticking', 'This Is Mine', the aforementioned 'Uh Huh Her' and 'Evol' and various Hope Six outtakes) and it would be nice for these strays to have a home as part of a bigger collection. These are some of Harvey's best songs, and they often feel lost to the ether. A b-sides and rarities compilation feels like the logical next step after the album reissues.
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