SOUNDTRACK: BULLY-“Dry” (2021).
Back in 1993, PJ Harvey’s album Rid of Me was one of my favorite releases. I loved the dynamic and the powerful lyrics.
I really enjoyed Bully’s 2015 Feel Like album. I had a ticket to see Bully a couple of months ago, but obviously that didn’t happen. Here Bully covered PJ Harvey.
The performance is part of Sounds of Saving’s “Song That Found Me at the Right Time” series and is paired with a Q&A in which Bully’s Alicia Bognanno discusses mental health issues, both personal and across the music industry.
The interview is about five minutes, and an important moment comes when she says
A lot of musicians, like myself, are sober and dealing with mental health. I think it’s 85% of artists, or something, struggle with mental health. I have a link on my fridge for a suicide prevention hotline because you never know when people are going to need that. And people aren’t really vocal about it, so that should be readily available at all times.
For this cover, Bognanno plays the song solo. She gets a great sound on her guitar and I love the way she drops the distortion for the quieter chorus.
Her vocal delivery is right on, although she makes the song her own because her singing style is quite different.
There’s no solo like in the original, but it is hardly missed in this excellent cover.
You can watch the interview and song here.
[READ: January 30, 2021] “True Stories”
This is one of Hilton Als’ Profiles in the New Yorker. This one is about PJ Harvey.
I loved PJ Harvey’s earlier records and even though her newer records are “better,” I miss the visceral sound of the early ones. Als’ profile talks about that change in sound and how a lot of her image was character driven, not personal.
For PJ Harvey’s third album, To Bring You My Love, Harvey started dressing differently, in a costume: tight pink catsuit that accentuated every line and bump, an exposed black bra; turquoise eyeshadow, heavy black mascara on eyelashes as long as beetles’ legs; careless red lipstick. It was like the opposite of Bowie’s immaculate Thin White Duke.
She called this character Vamp.
She tells Als that in the early days she didn’t know how to do interviews and how to keep private things to herself. At the time she wore black, scraped her hair back and didn’t wear makeup. She wore big boots, played a big guitar and made a lot of noise. She says the English pres wanted her to be this dark melancholy feminist.
But Harvey couldn’t be pigeonholed. She is a musical purist who delights in the impurity of contemporary rock as it borrows from the blues, funk, pop, techo and trip hip.
Harvey grew up in a village of 600 with artistic parents who listened to all kinds of music. They often had bands staying at their place on the weekend. (more…)
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I really liked Bully’s first album Feels Like, which came out back in 2005. Then they just sort of disappeared (I gather there were label issues with their second album).
I Just Read About That... 