PJ Harvey at the Vic, October 28
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Als, who is black, goes on to note that white artists like Beck, the Beastie Boys, and the Backstreet Boys have “borrowed extensively from black music,” by which he obviously means they have “stolen from black music.” But anyone who’s paying attention to hip-hop will tell you that the most egregious (and extensive) borrowing these days is being done by a black artist, Puff Daddy, who has “borrowed extensively” from white artists Sting and Led Zeppelin, and by “borrowed extensively” I mean “taken songs in their entirety and rapped some lame shit over top of them.” If Als had pursued this line of thought more fully, he might have also noted that “Kashmir,” the Led Zeppelin song that Puff Daddy uses in his “Come With Me,” borrows extensively from Arabic music. Or that white hip-hop artist Fatboy Slim borrowed extensively from white artists the Who to create his breakthrough single “Going Out of My Head.”
Instead, the Beck bashing turns out to be Als hemming and hawing before he posits that white rock singer PJ Harvey does a better job acting “black” than not only Beck but also black R & B singer Lauryn Hill. If you think it’s taking me a while to get around to PJ in this essay, see how long it would take you to find her in his (hint: six pages) if there weren’t a gaudy pastel illustration of her on the second page, with Hill peeking out from behind. The caption reads, “Polly Jean Harvey may make a better soul-music diva for the new age than Lauryn Hill.”
Harvey hails from Yeovil, a small town in the southwest of England. But at the Vic, in pink stiletto-heeled ankle boots, a lizard-skin print skirt, and a red spaghetti-strap top, she was Elvis, she was Iggy Pop, she was Mick Jagger. She exhibits the same knack for turning scrappy, familiar-sounding elements into transcendent, era-defining magic that they once did. She didn’t merely present her songs (as, for instance, Liz Phair had done on the same stage the three nights before); she lived them, writhing in their snakelike skin in a desperate attempt to shed the burdens and traumas she herself had sewn into them. Watching her deliver songs from Is This Desire? as well as selections from her previous four solo releases, I had the distinct sensation that I was watching a legend at work.
