P.J. Harvey

Pazz & Jop 2011: Alex Macpherson On Pistol Annies, PJ Harvey, And Why You Should Always Trust Diddy

To supplement this year's Pazz & Jop launch, Sound of the City asked a few critics to expand on the reasonings behind their voting. Here, the British critic Alex Macpherson finds protest music and love songs that were worth holding on to past the end of the calendar year. Every year, I cavil about ... More >>

Pazz & Jop Comments: Top 10-Plus

The year's big albums, from tUnE-yArDs on down

Confuse the Market: Post-Crossover, Indie Retreats

tUnE-yArds, PJ Harvey, and St. Vincent Get Physical

The 39th Pazz And Jop Poll Is Live

Hooray and huzzah, the Pazz & Jop poll, calculated from the ballots of 700 critics around the globe, is up and running and ready for your perusal. Congratulations to Merrill Garbus of tUnE-yArDs, whose w h o k i l l walked away with the albums poll; and Adele, whose inescapable yet compelling even o ... More >>

She's Not There: WU LYF, Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Kate Bush, PJ Harvey, And The Value Of Absence

Every year, ambitious young bands find new ways—fascinating, puerile, ingenious—to play the Internet, and in 2011, one of the most captivating, effective ways to do so involved near-silence. A cluster of breakthrough bands, WU LYF and Unknown Mortal Orchestra among them, caused a huge pu ... More >>

The 10 Best Live Shows of 2011

The best stuff we saw on stage this year, from thrash to Kpop

This Week In The Voice: The 10 Best Concerts Of 2011; Tenor Saxophonists Ascend

​In this week's Village Voice, on newsstands now: I pick my 10 favorite concerts of 2011 (Patrick Stump (above), PJ Harvey, and tUnE-yArDs all make the short list); and Francis Davis runs down recent standout releases by tenor saxophonists.

Ben Allison

Underwhelmed And Overstimulated, Part II: PJ Harvey, Jessie J, And The Post-Pop Character Landscape

​ Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, with contributions from Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph, continues. Follow along here. Thanks Maura! And hello Nick, Katherine and Eric. Post-megasales megastars? Beyoncé and Gaga fit the bill, for certa ... More >>

Underwhelmed And Overstimulated, Part III: Occupying The Year Of The Woman Cliché In Hopes Of Blowing It Up

Kanye West at Occupy Wall Street; confused woman. ​Sound of the City's year-end roundtable, with contributions from Tom Ewing, Eric Harvey, Maura Johnston, Nick Murray, and Katherine St. Asaph, continues. Follow along here. ... More >>

The 10 Best Things From 2011 To Listen To While Writing, According To Actual Authors

Gish-era Smashing Pumpkins: Reissued in 2011, so it counts! ​Reports from the holiday-party front indicate that 2011 was another long and lonely year for the fiction writers and memoirists of New York, who were kept company at home all day long mainly by various "internet friends" and related ... More >>

Marianne Faithfull

Week In Review: Their Eyes Were Watching You

​ The week that was in music: "Weird Al" Yankovic made Lady Gaga blink. Beyoncé overloaded everyone's eardrums. Fleetwood Mac is in rock critics' comfort zone.

Live: PJ Harvey Takes Control At Terminal 5

​PJ Harvey Terminal 5 Tuesday, April 19 Better than: Anything else. Like PJ Harvey's other work, her new album Let England Shake is about longing. But she confronts something different than the sexual want she sang so explicitly about on her erlier records--here, instead, the desire is for ... More >>

Ben Allison Band

PROTEST SONGS

Polly Jean gets political

PJ Harvey, In Mourning

On Let England Shake, a spare, moving tribute to her broken homeland

This Week in the Voice: The Return of 'Shelter'

​This week in the Voice, Camille Dodero kicks off the relaunch of "Shelter," a column that chronicles how New Yorkers live at home. She revisits Lois Morris, a writer who was the column's first-ever subject in 1997. A lot has changed for the former East Village resident in 14 years, including ... More >>

LCD Soundsystem, PJ Harvey Add Terminal 5 Dates

​Yes, the Great LCD Soundsystem Retirement Show debacle took another turn over the weekend: Given the profound likelihood that an appalling percentage of the tickets for their April 2nd Madison Square Garden gig are now in the hands of scalpers, the band has announced four Terminal 5 shows to ... More >>

Stream PJ Harvey's Let England Shake, And Hope She Adds Another Terminal 5 Show

​James Blake has probably got Album Everyone Will Be Talking About This Week honors all sewn up for now, but roundabout next Tuesday a nation's fawning eyes will turn to PJ Harvey's fantastic Let England Shake, far from the screamiest entry in her 20-year catalog (!), but among the bleakest, h ... More >>

Week In Review: We'll Never Get Over The White Stripes

​We started out the week on a positive jam. Riding high off Bob Dylan Week, we spent the weekend paying tribute to all those bands who came before with Craig Finn at Music Hall of Williamsburg and trying with all our hearts to sing along while the Dismemberment Plan flailed around on stage at ... More >>

PJ Harvey Is Playing Terminal 5 In April

​Good news for all you Foursquare enthusiasts who can't get enough of Terminal 5: On April 20th the cavernous Midtown spot will host none other than PJ Harvey, supporting her new record Let England Shake and possessed of a terrifying intensity perfect for making large places feel uncomfortably ... More >>

The Six Most Decisive Wins In Pazz and Jop History

Not quite​Having spent the last two weeks poring through Pazz & Jop 2010, I've learned everything from the two albums most statistically similar to a bootleg compilation of early Bob Seger (those would be Flockaveli and Ke$ha's Animal/Cannibal combo) to the number of writers who ended their co ... More >>

Hear A New PJ Harvey Song, "Written On The Forehead"

​The indomitable PJ Harvey has a new record, Let England Shake, due out in mid-February; head to her website right now to hear "Written on the Forehead," a soft, elegiac, reggae-sample-driven drifter, Harvey singing "Let it burn/Let it burn/Let it burn burn burn" in a high, wistful, far-less-t ... More >>

Q&A: Japandroids' Brian King on Their Single Series, Disappointing PJ Harvey, and That Siren Festival Rumor

A pair of late bloomers, guitarist/vocalist Brian King and drummer/vocalist David Prowse had never been in a band before they graduated from the University of Victoria and started chaffing against responsible adulthood and career jobs. Which meant that when the Canadian duo formed Japandroids--pr ... More >>

Kristeenyoung

PJ Harvey & John Parish

This Week in the Voice

When you think about out-of-control parents and coaches in little-league sports, you probably think of the suburbs. But right here in the city, there are sixth-graders playing 12 months a year, with sponsors like Nike, signing bonuses -- and out-of-control parents and coaches. This is Elite Youth ... More >>

SXSW 2009: Getting Off on the Good Foot with Marnie Stern and Heartless Bastards

Heartless Bastards (Radio Room) Marnie Stern (Club De Ville) SXSW Wednesday Afternoon, March 18 Erika Wennerstrom's bandmates give her a tremendously wide berth onstage, three grizzled gentlemen crowding demurely to our far right as she holds court on the left, the sort of blast radius you'd give ... More >>

PJ Harvey and John Parish Reconvene...

...and target your chicken-liver balls

PJ Harvey & John Parish

THE SOUND OF PHILADELPHIA

Diplo, Santogold bite down on the Big Apple

Live: PJ Harvey at the Beacon Theatre

PJ Harvey's White Chalk

Tense, confessional, and excruciating in every sense

Hugs and Kisses, The Outbursts of Everett True: Stolen Recordings

A Not-Going-to-SXSW Playlist

There's No Winking in Hell

Liberal heathens imitate fundie Christians denouncing liberal heathens. Sweet.

The Pussy Rock Monologues

On one man's obsession with opera, MySpace, and NYC's female-fronted rock hopefuls

1995

Angel With Big Friends

Boozy chantoozie and young turks bring out the mediocre

Lollapalost

Where to catch your favorite bands now that the big show is canceled

Carnal Fission

Polly Jean Harvey goes home to the self-imposed alienation that all of us know so well

Hopelessly Devoted

Polly Jean Harvey, you're my star; Volume gets a visit from the city

Horoscope

Live and Erect

Rock And Rap Shows Bed-Spring Into Action

Getting Bizzy

End Games

Beats Below the Street

Love Taps