PJ Harvey :: Rid of Me
The year was 1993. I was in bed with a bronchial infection, and asthma prevented me from moving around very often. The mail came, and I opened my copy of PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me, an album I had ordered after reading a blurb in Spin Magazine.
So I put the CD in the player, pressed play, and heard nothing. As I turn the volume dial up a bit, I hear some faint drumming and even fainter singing. So I turn it up some more, put the CD on repeat (I wanted to limit the amount of times I had to get up), and returned to bed. About a minute later, PJ starts wailing and I leap out of bed to turn the volume back down.
Surely I am not the only person to have made this ‘error’ in volume adjustment.
I would also like to think that PJ (or perhaps Steve Albini, the album’s producer) found some humor in surprising or duping listeners into blowing out their ears or speakers in this manner. That is, of course, in addition to the great aesthetic effect of having such varied dynamics — a device that perfectly compliments the song’s lyrics as PJ vacillates between fantasies of total possession of her man, desperate pleas to stay, and unadulterated rage.
I always knew that I was a feminist of some sort — I mean, of course women are equal to men — but I had never identified with the largely folk-driven music by women that I had thus far been exposed to. This is why sitting in bed that day as an asthmatic, angsty adolescent girl, I felt such immense relief at hearing a woman so unapologetically rock.
Rid of Me (6.2MB MP3)
PJ Harvey
jenny said on wednesday, june 04th, 2008
joshua said on thursday, june 05th, 2008
My favorite story about this record is from my friend CF. He and Albini and the Seam guys and some vampires all grew up together in Milwaukee and all moved to Chicago at about the same time. Albini was building a studio in his house near Montrose and California. He also built a secret staircase hidden behind a bookshelf in that house. I had Thanksgiving dinner there once.
Anyway, CF and Albini are sitting around in the secret control room and the phone rings. Albini chats for a few moments and then cups his hand over the receiver and turns to CF and says, “hey CF, hey, you think I should engineer Polly Harvey’s record?” And CF shrugs his shoulders and raises his eyebrows and says “uh… sure.” Albini barks “I’ll do it!” into the phone and the rest, is history.
Kirk said on thursday, june 05th, 2008
CF is my new hero.
i used to listen to this song almost every day at an old job of mine. I’d put it on REALLY loud whenever i had to go several levels below the street to archive medical records in a dank, 40 degree room. PJ saved me daily from that impotent, hand-wringing kind of mood being employed eventually gives me. the album as a whole never failed to launch me into something much more respectable (entitled raging? i dunno what it was, but it was better than being a big fat whiner). LOVE IT.