This week’s Time magazine wryly dubs the 2000s “The Decade from Hell.”
It was certainly a decade from hell for the bigwigs of the music industry. But musically it was far from hellish, with the August 2006 launch of Rock Turtleneck the unquestionable high-water mark. There was also some truly brilliant music and a few great runs of albums by some artists that would be top-shelf in any era.
So, throughout December, Rock Turtleneck will be celebrating the Records That Rocked The Aughts: albums that Rock Turtlenecked our decade to the core, featured in no particular order. Herewith, #1:
#1: PJ Harvey: Stories from the City, Stories From the Sea
It was pretty clear from her 1992 debut Dry that Polly Jean Harvey was a brilliant, unusual artist with a feral sexuality. But for all her raw talent, her music was sometimes abrasive and hard to enjoy.
That changed in 2000 with Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. Inspired by some time living in pre-9/11 New York City with a coterie of independent-minded downtown hipsters, contrasted with her roots on the English seaside, she seemed liberated and full of confidence. She put her eccentricities on the shelf and wrote using classic pop song structures. Rather than a sellout, it was a perfect suit for her beautiful, powerful voice.
The album is a tour-de-force with no non-great cuts. Harvey had shed her oddball-wallflower persona and strutted her stuff like a female Jagger or Bowie or Freddie Mercury, full of brio, bravado and even machismo:
My favorite Stories song, and one of my absolute favorite songs of the decade by anyone, is “You Said Some-thing,” which recalls a late-night tryst on a rooftop in Brooklyn:
Leaning against railings
Describing the colours
And the smells of our homeland
Acting like lovers
How did we get here
To this point of living?
I held my breath
And you said something
Throughout the song Polly tells us that her suitor said something that she’s never forgotten, something that was really important. But we never know what it was. Of course, we’re better off not knowing.
PJ Harvey - You said something (Live)
Carrie Warner | MySpace Video
After Stories from the City, Polly experimented with other, less commercial songforms. But for Rock Turtleneck, this is the album where she brought it all back home, and it still thrills nine years later.
Let's take things out with another Stories masterpiece: "This Mess We're In," her uber-sexy duet with Thom Yorke of Radiohead.
and wrote using classic pop song structures.
ReplyDeleteStill not enough for my taste, but that is my problem, I suppose.
Still, Good Fortune and You Said Something are two of my favourite songs of all time. A record full of pure pop like that would be fantastic.
Having a long-distance relationship with someone in NYC (and living in Brooklyn and hanging out in Little Italy) and then moving and living there for 18 years will do that, I think.
Both of those songs -- which double as love letters to the city -- never fail to give me serious goosebumps.
How did we get here
To this point of living?
&
On a rooftop in Brooklyn
One in the morning
Watching the lights flash
In Manhattan
I see five bridges
The Empire State Building ...
&
Things I once thought
Unbelievable
In my life
Have all taken place