Soundtrack of Our Lives: PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her
This summer, I spent an inordinate amount of time on the Long Island Railroad, or the LIRR, as they call it, even though "railroad" is one word, so the second "R" in "LIRR" is kind of reduntant, but whatever.
Anyway, the whole reason I was spending hours of my life in Long Island and on the LIRR was because Fibonacci was living in New York City for the summer. Southwest doesn't fly into the city; they do, helpfully, fly into Islip-MacArthur Long Island Airport, and so if you don't have any cheese and you need to fly a lot, you're at the mercy of Southwest, even if that means you get dropped off more than an hour away from your final destination. It is what it is, the Greyhound of the Skies. So many a weekend in June and July, I found myself shlepping from the midwest to the east coast in this fashion:
1) Take train to work
1.5) Work all day
2) Take train to Midway
3) Take shuttle from Islip to Ronkonkoma Station to catch the LIRR (that's ron-KON-koma, not ron-kon-KO-MA, as this very helpful Carmella Soprano-type helpfully told me)
3.5) If there is track work on the LIRR, take a bus to Central Islip, THEN get on the train there
4) Enjoy the 1:20 minute trip into Penn Station
5a) Take the subway to the Upper West Side to see Fibonacci, or
5b) If you have money, take a taxi
The whole trip from Chicago to New York took about, oh, I dunno, like, 700 days--especially if there was a problem on the train, or if my plane was late, causing me to miss the train and have to wait two-and-a-half hours (!) for the next one. There is only so much people watching you can do before they start to think you're touched in the head and move their children away from the wan-looking, staring lady with the bloodshot eyes. And after your second cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (decaf, extra-extra), your teeth start to dissolve, leaving little bits of tooth dust on your tongue, and MY GOD was it ever boring.
Naturally, I tried to pack as many diversions as I could carry, putting the focus mostly on CDs (I can't read on the train or I will barf). Travelling music is tough to choose because who the hell knows how you're going to feel from the time you picked it out to the time you start listening to it. I have a bunch of go-to CDs I always bring knowing that at some point along the trip I'm going to feel excited (Blur, Leisure), nervous (Suede, ST), contemplative (U2, The Unforgettable Fire or Calexico, The Black Light), chill (Massive Attack, Blue Lines), like bobbing my head (A Tribe Called Quest, The Low-End Theory), or melancholy (Morrissey, anything). On this, my first trip to see Fibonacci since he moved, however, I wasn't sure what I wanted to hear. I was excited, nervous, contemplative, all of it, all at once. As I have a tendency to get away from (ahead of?)myself, he had only been gone two weeks when I started getting all squirrely and needy and was all, "Is that distance I feel? Can I really be okay by myself?" So I knew that I should look for something that sounded like...that.
Enter PJ Harvey's Uh Huh Her. The advance press for this album had been positive and I was really excited to get it. Even the impossibly hard-to-like music-eratti at Pitchfork gave it a pretty solid review, even if they did dole out a rather stingy 7.6 rating. And having been a fan of hers throughout all her incarnations, from raucous (1992's Dry), to lustful (1993's Rid of Me), and mournful and scattershot (1995's To Bring You My Love and the 1998 follow-up Is This Desire?), to jubilant (2000's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea), I was pretty confident that Uh Huh Her would be just the sort of schizophrenic album I was seeking.
This record might just be the perfect travelling record. It soothes if you're en route somewhere, anywhere, even if you're just lying on the floor with your head between the speakers. And for me, anyway, at that moment in time, on the LIRR with no idea where I was going, it fit. It starts out with this dirty, slurring, slightly out-of-tune guitar line into a frantic, but lurching song about some guy with a bad, bad mouth ("The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth"). Tracks 2 and 4, the excellent "Shame" and the spooky "Pocket Knife," could have been outtakes from To Bring You My Love. And of course, "Letter," which may be the like, the first song ever about the lost art of letter writing. It's total porn for editor types, like myself--just read the lyrics. I'm no naif; I know what she's getting at when she's singing about licking her envelope.
Right around track 6, "Slow Drug," we were flying by some part of deep, suburban Long Island, along a stretch of automobile graveyards and junk heaps. And there was all this detritus, difficult to make out in the coming twilight, but I could see shells of cars, cranes, and a long, uneven row of lonesome soda machines that, based on their slumped posture, must have known that their days in the sun had come to an end, unceremoniously, near these train tracks. Faded from months or years of sitting out in the elements, it was no longer possible to discern what sodas they had once proffered. That sight made me feel slumped and lonesome myself, but then track 8, "Cat on the Wall," busted into my funk and just as abruptly, the landscape changed; we were getting closer to the city, as evidenced by the sudden onslaught of graffiti.
I turned off my headphones after that; the scenery was becoming much more interesting, especially as we approached the caterwaul that is Jamaica, Queens. I couldn't listen to the CD and take in the sights, or else my head would surely have exploded.
Fibonacci met me at Penn Station and I have to tell you, it was a glorious reunion and an equally wonderful weekend. All the same, each time I went to visit him that summer, while making the journey, I still had those schizo feelings. And each time I got on the LIRR, I listened to Uh Huh Her. And round about Jamaica, I was settled. So thanks, Polly Jean, for being the soundtrack to the soda machines.
PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her
Purchased on June 8, 2004
Virgin Megastore, Michigan Avenue, Chicago
Anyway, the whole reason I was spending hours of my life in Long Island and on the LIRR was because Fibonacci was living in New York City for the summer. Southwest doesn't fly into the city; they do, helpfully, fly into Islip-MacArthur Long Island Airport, and so if you don't have any cheese and you need to fly a lot, you're at the mercy of Southwest, even if that means you get dropped off more than an hour away from your final destination. It is what it is, the Greyhound of the Skies. So many a weekend in June and July, I found myself shlepping from the midwest to the east coast in this fashion:
1) Take train to work
1.5) Work all day
2) Take train to Midway
3) Take shuttle from Islip to Ronkonkoma Station to catch the LIRR (that's ron-KON-koma, not ron-kon-KO-MA, as this very helpful Carmella Soprano-type helpfully told me)
3.5) If there is track work on the LIRR, take a bus to Central Islip, THEN get on the train there
4) Enjoy the 1:20 minute trip into Penn Station
5a) Take the subway to the Upper West Side to see Fibonacci, or
5b) If you have money, take a taxi
The whole trip from Chicago to New York took about, oh, I dunno, like, 700 days--especially if there was a problem on the train, or if my plane was late, causing me to miss the train and have to wait two-and-a-half hours (!) for the next one. There is only so much people watching you can do before they start to think you're touched in the head and move their children away from the wan-looking, staring lady with the bloodshot eyes. And after your second cup of Dunkin' Donuts coffee (decaf, extra-extra), your teeth start to dissolve, leaving little bits of tooth dust on your tongue, and MY GOD was it ever boring.
Naturally, I tried to pack as many diversions as I could carry, putting the focus mostly on CDs (I can't read on the train or I will barf). Travelling music is tough to choose because who the hell knows how you're going to feel from the time you picked it out to the time you start listening to it. I have a bunch of go-to CDs I always bring knowing that at some point along the trip I'm going to feel excited (Blur, Leisure), nervous (Suede, ST), contemplative (U2, The Unforgettable Fire or Calexico, The Black Light), chill (Massive Attack, Blue Lines), like bobbing my head (A Tribe Called Quest, The Low-End Theory), or melancholy (Morrissey, anything). On this, my first trip to see Fibonacci since he moved, however, I wasn't sure what I wanted to hear. I was excited, nervous, contemplative, all of it, all at once. As I have a tendency to get away from (ahead of?)myself, he had only been gone two weeks when I started getting all squirrely and needy and was all, "Is that distance I feel? Can I really be okay by myself?" So I knew that I should look for something that sounded like...that.
Enter PJ Harvey's Uh Huh Her. The advance press for this album had been positive and I was really excited to get it. Even the impossibly hard-to-like music-eratti at Pitchfork gave it a pretty solid review, even if they did dole out a rather stingy 7.6 rating. And having been a fan of hers throughout all her incarnations, from raucous (1992's Dry), to lustful (1993's Rid of Me), and mournful and scattershot (1995's To Bring You My Love and the 1998 follow-up Is This Desire?), to jubilant (2000's Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea), I was pretty confident that Uh Huh Her would be just the sort of schizophrenic album I was seeking.
This record might just be the perfect travelling record. It soothes if you're en route somewhere, anywhere, even if you're just lying on the floor with your head between the speakers. And for me, anyway, at that moment in time, on the LIRR with no idea where I was going, it fit. It starts out with this dirty, slurring, slightly out-of-tune guitar line into a frantic, but lurching song about some guy with a bad, bad mouth ("The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth"). Tracks 2 and 4, the excellent "Shame" and the spooky "Pocket Knife," could have been outtakes from To Bring You My Love. And of course, "Letter," which may be the like, the first song ever about the lost art of letter writing. It's total porn for editor types, like myself--just read the lyrics. I'm no naif; I know what she's getting at when she's singing about licking her envelope.
Right around track 6, "Slow Drug," we were flying by some part of deep, suburban Long Island, along a stretch of automobile graveyards and junk heaps. And there was all this detritus, difficult to make out in the coming twilight, but I could see shells of cars, cranes, and a long, uneven row of lonesome soda machines that, based on their slumped posture, must have known that their days in the sun had come to an end, unceremoniously, near these train tracks. Faded from months or years of sitting out in the elements, it was no longer possible to discern what sodas they had once proffered. That sight made me feel slumped and lonesome myself, but then track 8, "Cat on the Wall," busted into my funk and just as abruptly, the landscape changed; we were getting closer to the city, as evidenced by the sudden onslaught of graffiti.
I turned off my headphones after that; the scenery was becoming much more interesting, especially as we approached the caterwaul that is Jamaica, Queens. I couldn't listen to the CD and take in the sights, or else my head would surely have exploded.
Fibonacci met me at Penn Station and I have to tell you, it was a glorious reunion and an equally wonderful weekend. All the same, each time I went to visit him that summer, while making the journey, I still had those schizo feelings. And each time I got on the LIRR, I listened to Uh Huh Her. And round about Jamaica, I was settled. So thanks, Polly Jean, for being the soundtrack to the soda machines.
PJ Harvey, Uh Huh Her
Purchased on June 8, 2004
Virgin Megastore, Michigan Avenue, Chicago
posted by Iseult at 4:28 PM
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