TS: Bjork vs. PJ Harvey

"people still listen to Rolling Stone, idiot."
Ha.

Bjork

PJ Harvey.

Bjork is much more interesting.

But she also sucks more.

Bjork.

I thought that was an AIM transcript!

Yesterday I went up to a cute indie-pixie girl I'd never really spoken to and talked about bjork on an inspired guess. So, bjork I guess! Although I like that PJ Harvey song about being locked in room 10, and I don't really like any bjork songs.

Bjork, but I don't really know a ton about PJ Harvey

Bjork amazes me whereas PJ Harvey has the potential to arouse my mind, hair follicles and spirit with hope, but equally the ability to leave me a bit bored. Bjork need only concern herself with my unconditional servility. If she cared. So Bjork.

PJ Harvey for the music; Bjork for the human behind the music.

Björk. For the umlaut.

wtf?

Björk.

PJ Harvey never really transcended her influences to become anything unique or better than those she took inspiration from (Throwing Muses, Patti Smith, Nick Cave etc etc) and while I like her, I can't help feeling she could have been so much more if she had carried on following the muse that led to such stunningly powerful and original early records as 'Dry' 'Rid Of Me' instead of wasting her incredible voice on such dull aor fluff like 'Stories from...'.

Björk on the other hand broke free from timid playing inside genre limits pretty much from the word go. Absorbed her influences and extended them musically (lets just say Kate Bush doesn't ever need to make that comeback record with 90's techno influences now). Straddles the musical cutting edge/popular charts with consummate ease like virtually nobody else around. Has been hugely influential to other artists. I've seen Peej live at the heoght of her powers (around the third album) I've seen Björk live.. far too many times. Peej is ok. Björk is an event. Holds an audience in stunned, gobsmacked awe. Oh, she can sing.. pretty good.

PJ Harvey was fine for a while, but she's never made me swoon like Bjork has occaissinally been able to. That said, Bjork has never rocked as La Harve has. Whatever. They're both great, but honestly....I haven't paid much attention to either in years.

This Thursday is Bjork day on 6 Music

Everyone Else in the History of Life

BJ Harvey even if she is a cow cuz all Bjork songs have the same melody, ie aaa---oooo-wweee-uhhh

PJ Harvey is a rockist, but Bjork has the sort of balls and bravado the people who invented rock had. She's inventing music, not retreading it. She is, if you like, too 'rock' to merely rock.

There, my rockist justification of Bjork, a non-rockist.

I'm interested, as ever, in the tenuous connections between aesthetics and politics. I'd like to know, for instance, if Gear's brother votes differently from Gear, and if they argue about politics. If PJH fans, in other words, are to the right of Bjork fans on the political spectrum?

I remember the first time I saw PJH live, at the Powerhaus in Islington in the early 90s. I was ready to like what she did, but its base in electrified blues disappointed me. She was obviously an aesthetic conservative. I now group her, as latetotheparty does, with Nick Cave, Patti Smith et al -- people whose early promise to do something radical with the medium petered out and became a sort of personality cult based on their undoubted personal charisma.

Now I love Björk and see her as one of the most important innovators in music etc, but to claim that she doesn't retread music is ridiculous. She doesn't retread other people's music, but she certainly retreads her own, especially lately (nb: I love Medúlla).

Whereas PJ Harvey can only really be seen as someone who goes over familiar ground if you listen to Stories..., which is very much an aberration in her body of work. Is This Desire?, on the other hand, sounds and feels like very little else.

I couldn't say which I prefer, I love them both too much.

(PS - I couldn't care elss that PJ is a rockist, most musicians tend to be anyway.)

Ever see that PJ tour vid Reeling? I watched that and the mystique de la Harvey took a serious blow from which it was impossible to recover. PJ comes across about as rockist as Julian Bream -- very self-serious and calculating.

We thrashed this out in the other thread of course, but both the hosannas of PJ's rockist fans and Momus's critique of them/her are based in a convenient glossing over of all her most interesting work in favour of her most conservative (hackneyed, even).

I guess I have the same opinion as Alex on this.

I still haven't read that other thread all the way through, I had no internet access at the time and the sheer volume of it defeated me.

Part of PJ's appeal is that calculating, contrived, very deliberate side - and rather like Tom Waits, it appeals because it's theatrical, almost cabaret, not clunkily manipulative like eg Franz Ferdinand.

To respond to the political query from Momus. Oddly enough, my gut feeling is that Bjork fans would be more conservative (to the right) politically than PJ Harvey fans. Perhaps this is based on the impression that Bjork has fans widely spread across the political / social / pop spectrum, where-as PJ fans are more localised on the alternative/indie/goth/left. But, really, what a rash generalisation either way!

Bjork.

But I'd like to have sex with both of them at the same time. In this context, they are both winners.

Haha Rollie wins.

_To Bring You My Love_ is an astonishing album (not because it's "blues-influenced" but because it's "industrial-inlfuenced") but ovreall I prefer Bjork.

i think it would be funnier to get drunk with bjork but music-wise it is pj by a mile. bjork's voice has always annoyed me. her music in between opera and dance as well. pj's music to me is more human, more down to earth, less from outer space. politically it could well be that pj and/or her audience are more to the conservative side of things. though i am not sure. anyways conservative does not equal right nowadays anymore anyways. look at the green party (in germany). conservative values can be very leftist.

bjork is very much a rockist!

"look at the green party (in germany). conservative values can be very leftist."

Isn't that the point of Homogenic?

Despite the fact that it means that I agree with Momus about something, I vote for Bjork.