PJ Harvey & Thom Yorke - 'This Mess We're In'
October 19th, 2008 | Posted By: Jonno | Uncategorized
When you start becoming an official music aficionado, to the extent that you can pick potential ARIA winners like my grandmother can pick horses, it’s time to go searching beyond the Katy Perrys and (sic) Coldplays of the world for some quintessential tunes. For me, that search came to fruition in the form of Polly Jean Harvey’s most accessible and popular release, ‘Stories from The City, Stories from The Sea.’ Despite sounding quite Aussie and having collabo-ed (that’s new slang care of your friends at One A Day) with one in particular who became her lover (I’m looking at you, Nick Cave), PJ is from the UK. She’s also a woman who really knows how to play a guitar, has a voice like Patti Smith back when Patti Smith could sing and kind of makes the Veronicas and their grrl-legions look really, really stupid.
Being a Brit and famous and all that, 2000 saw Harvey call upon what I assume was a close friend of hers, since he rarely, if ever guests on anything, to help her pad out her new track. Having just garnered critical and public acclaim with ‘Kid A’ and soon, ‘Amnesiac’ Thom Yorke was happy to help. Which is cool, because you get to hear that riveting Radiohead wail up against a deadpan lady delivery, which is exactly what PJ gives us. With Yorke singing most if not all of the lyrics, it kind of seems like she wrote the song for him. Except Thom would never say something like ‘Night and day/I dream of/Making love/To you’ on his own record. No, leave is to Ms Harvey, master of moodiness to come up with something so confronting that even Thom Yorke would jump at it.
I like this track because there’s a real vulnerability to it, and it seems mostly like it’s coming from Yorke. Not that he’s exactly the Alpha Male in ordinary musical situations, but this song particularly highlights a different kind of male/female dichotomy, especially in the call and response at the end where PJ interrupts Thom consistently with her tuneless delivery. The closest thing we got at the ARIAS tonight was country singer Kasey Chambers and her new husband who made a country album together. Hooray, call me when Sam Sparro is on or something. In your post-awards hangover, tune in and drop out to some real music. It might just get that godawful Gabriella Cilmi song out of your head.
PJ Harvey & Thom Yorke – ‘This Mess We’re In’
