If you’re new to Dangerous Minds then let me give you a little heads-up: I love all kinds of music and I promote a diverse bunch of bands and artists on this website. But I do have favorites - Nick Cave, Patti Smith, The Ramones, Leonard Cohen, The Clash, Joy Division, Bad Brains, Lee “Scratch” Perry, Arthur Lee, Roky Erickson and The Velvet Underground, are all lovingly and neatly stacked in the mausoleum of my DM archives - along with many unsung, forgotten or once-vilified bands,
Despite the somewhat “classic” collection of bands listed above, I do dig a shitload of new music. But the latest hipster top ten comes and goes as quickly as atrial tachycardia, suddenly accelerating the rock n’ roll heart before the thick bloody muscle kicks back to its old familiar rhythm.
New bands, new music, glide across my digital windshield, linger for a split-second, before the jittery wipers of my ADD thrust the whole sonic mess to the margins of consciousness, to join an ever-growing tidal pool of abandoned one-hit wonders and lost geniuses awash with the splintered wreckage of the good ship Adderall, where nervous little sailors once sang songs by Yeasayer, Interpol and Vampire Weekend.
You can take or leave what I’ve said in the preceding paragraphs, it’s just a bunch of linguistic horsehit that writers spew when they talk about rock and roll. If you’ve read Lester Bangs, then you know the sentiment, an intellectual finger fuck leading up to the real fucking deal: the music of an artist that excites by just doing what artists do: being fearless, reckless and challenging themselves. The beauty about rock and roll is no one really took it seriously, so those of us who do have a huge latitude in which to fail. PJ Harvey rarely fails.
PJ performing at Les Eurockéennes Festival in Belfort, France, on 3 July 2004.
01 Uh huh her
02 The whores hustle and the hustlers whore
03 Who the fuck ?
04 The letter
05 Dress06 Evol
07 Perfect day elise
08 Victory
09 You come through
10 The darker days of me and him
11 Down by the water
12 Life and death or Mr. badmouth
13 Good fortune
14 Meet th monsta
15 Cat on the wall
16 Harder
17 Taut
18 Big exit