Everybody has a Prozac moment sometime.

Listening to Dry by PJ Harvey

Well it wasn't as bad as the Kate Bush biography but Siren Rising - a biography of PJ Harvey didn't quite reveal the depths that Polly Jean shows us in her music. Having said that, what exactly is the function of a music biography other than to reveal juicy snippets to the fans? They rarely live up to any promise of real analysis because very few pop and rock musicians have real depth of intellect. If I was more widely read, I suppose I could expect a bombardment of counter-examples and I bet Leonard Cohen would be in there somewhere but even Radiohead are counter-culture lite really. They want to sum up beliefs and package them up for the sixth-form poetry brigade to understand and yet still think they are digesting some meaty new idea. Still, if they are on the side you believe in then what is wrong with that?

PJ harvey is of course listed as being strange because she is perceived as singing about 'feminist' issues and things than blokes just don't like talking about or even hearing. The indie kids get such a kick from thinking that they are being alternative because they give ear-time to her complaints about men. The problem is that I don't think that they are complaints about men in general - they are stories and recollections about specific men - and women - possibly without wanting to colour how you think of them - a sort of Fortean scepticism where no comment either way is actually wanted - just a list of the events that happened so you can say "hey - wasn't that strange and dramatic?" rather than wanting any solution or opinion. Anyway, the biography was just that really - a time line of a life lifted from interviews and discographies, written well-enough but without any real insight into the person other than what you might get from the limited amount of lyrics that were included.

Dry - the first album - is still the best - lyrically and musically. It has no theme other than the similarity of the instrumentation that comes from simply recording the instruments you have. It actually blows me away that one so young could write it; I remember what I was like at the same age (she is not far behind me really) and I could never have anything like the depth of feeling that shines out of those songs. It is strange as well, that the discordance of the music seems to be lessened by the sense of the words beings 'meant' rather than being throwaway lines for the sake of getting some singing on the album. Compare this with the prozac-fuelled noodlings of New Order where the music is great, still echoing with the Chords of Joy Division but the words are rhyming by numbers without reason and meaning.

Apologies for a little bit of politics today but heavy respect is due to this man.

Also, I am smug because I finished the first THREE on this list and only jettisoned one of the others though I have not started the other 6. I think I should try Cloud Atlas again - it is still by the bed rather than back in the bookshelf.

Och-A-Vaye