Fulsome Prism Blues

Now here’s a dangerous beastie, definitely not a wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous one at all. If there’s any breastie panic going on, it’s mine all mine.  Anyone up for an LP that’s all talons, acid, sharp edges and cut-glass angles? PJ Harvey 4-Track Demos, it is then.

When her band disintegrated and her major label debut only 5 months old PJ Harvey decided that what the world needed was to hear the raw, unfiltered demo versions of the tracks from Rid Of Me; her already pretty damn hostile Steve Albini produced album*.

4-Track Demos does exactly what the ace ballsy LP cover promises, it serves up PJ pretty much in the raw, unashamed and utterly confident in her own abilities; a wash of glamour, underarm hair and weaponized sexuality.  The back cover, a nude PJ Harvey wrapped in clear plastic sheeting, the artiste as product and commodity, is also great; any boob and pube titillation stoned immaculately DOA by her half-appraising, half-dismissive stare.

This is not a collection of gently pricked campfire guide versions, there’s more venom here than in any of my, umm, Venom albums; it’s heavier in places too.  4-Track Demos just heaves it all up for us, bile and assorted other fluids to the fore.  Occasionally the versions here are more skeletal, structurally less sound than the finished works, less fulsome, but for all that, clearer in intent.  Harvey wails, thrashes and plays some great varied guitar here and there.  The real change up from Rid Of Me is the liberation of her voice, on that LP too often buried in the mix one minute, only to be turned up too loud the next – on 4-Track Demos she is right there where you want it in the mix, often the primary instrument driving the more aggressive songs right at and right over you.

Okay, I’m biased here I confess you’ll get no real objectivity out of me – I am far too much of a fanboy for that.

The 14 tracks on 4-Track Demos and the 14 on Rid Of Me don’t mesh, there are 6 previously unreleased tracks on the former.  None of this 6 would have weakened the finished LP at all and a good few ended as staples of Harvey’s live show, sometimes for years.

Highlights? they are multifarious, but here’s some:

• Yuri-G – one of the best tracks on Rid Of Me, here it is more human, more committed, more immediate.
• M-Bike – a brilliant kiss off to a former lover with the wrong priorities, a great raw bluesy shuffle.
• Rid Of Me – Amidst the high-pitched backing vox and utterly bitching** guitar, PJ bleeds Patti Smith.
• Legs – The whole sound of To Bring You My Love is birthed in the opening low moan of this track.
• Easy –  a great menacing guitar line and worth it to hear PJ turning the title into a three syllable word, Axl style.
• Goodnight – almost more of an elegiac vibe than a song, it’s a haunter.

Honesty compels me to report that it isn’t all unalloyed triumph hereabouts.  1537-fave manic rockabilly thrasher ’50ft Queenie’ is not improved in demo form, it loses its’ fizz. Additionally, ‘Snake’ is a tuneless trial in this form^, Ms Harvey sounding like she’s trying to pass a house brick at one point; gruesome.

Overall 4-Track Demos is a damnably good time.  It is interesting to hear the Rid Of Me tracks so direct, uncompromising and immediate, free from the prism of anyone else’s vision – the band’s, or the producer’s, nothing standing between the listener and her fearsome fulsome talents.

What came next changed everything as she stepped out from under indie/alt/whatever banner and took her music down some radically different routes, PJ Unleashed; this LP was the start of this, a liberation. Not bad for a bunch of home recordings.

980 Down.

*Albini encouraged her to put out 4-Track Demos, rather than seeing it as any adverse comment on his job.

**have I ever used this as an adjective before?

^see also ‘Hook’.