PJ Harvey & John Parish :: “Black Hearted Love”

With the deluge of new music that’s been coming down the pipe lately, it’s even possible to let something slip by from as esteemed an artist as PJ Harvey.  Not that I wasn’t looking forward to her new release — which finds her once again recording with longtime collaborator John Parish on A Woman A Man Walked By, their second collaboration between the two since 1996’s Dance Hall at Louse Point.

I’m not sure where my excitement lies with this new record, especially after I had such high hopes for White Chalk’s attempt at an completely piano-based display of guttural angst, but ended up being not quite as accessible as I had hoped.  Here we have this new track “Black Hearted Love,” which apparently she and John worked on six or seven years ago and forgot about.  To which she re-discovered after listening to some tapes.

I feel almost at ease with the direction of this record as you clearly hear something from the beginning of this song that was sorely missing from the last record: Guitars.  Yes, that hard, gritty guitar riff which comes to a peak at around the 3:00 to 3:30 mark as Harvey mildly howls as if to a jilted lover, “I’d like to take you to a place I know. My black hearted.”  A song that wouldn’t feel too out of place as a Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea b-side.  In the past she’s mentioned that it’s very important for her not to repeat herself when working on a new record, but hopefully she’s come to a point now in her career where retreading isn’t such a terrible thing.