The Singles Jukebox

We deploy the critical big guns to save Friday.

[Video][Website]
[7.12]

Rebecca A. Gowns: Tied to Kosovo and a vague sense of political duty, the song succeeds in breaking out of its original message into a universal lament. It sounds like the kind of song that would have been covered in coffee houses across the ’90s, and instead it’s being released today, by PJ Harvey, a back-and-forth transfiguration of era that makes my head spin. It’s not a great song — the call and response in the chorus is weak, and it goes on about a minute too long into “trudging through it” territory — but something about it sticks around after it finishes, like a sun-bleached photograph taped to a bullet-ridden wall…
[7]

Josh Langhoff: “A blind man sings in Arabic” is a clunker of a line. No doubt Harvey actually saw this man during her travels to war-torn lands, but setting her scene with his foreignness of tongue and our squeamishness of eye is too obvious a shorthand, as though she’s Denzel Washington arriving in Kosovo amid Tony Scott’s washed-out color palette. But hey, that’s just one line, and if Harvey were singing in Arabic — or any language other than English — her voice and her band would still create a sound rich with detail and groove. Horns, handclaps, sheets of guitars and impassive backup singers set a more compelling scene than color desaturation and blind extras.
[6]

Alfred Soto: After a career of being the only vocal presence, Polly Jean Harvey allows John Parish and Mick Harvey ghostly, epicene backup on a record keyed to the refrain “I watched them fade out.” Bowie’s death inspired paeans to the vocal-free instrumental passage in “Sound and Vision.” The distorted guitar peal and hand claps on “The Wheel” make a suitable epitaph.
[7]

Megan Harrington: The handclaps are folky, the brass is industrial, and Harvey’s her  spectral self, haunting the proceedings. “The Wheel” would be out of  place on Let England Shake, but just slightly. After finding this  lost colony by the sea she’s continued to live there, her existence  changing the environment in small but serious ways. “The Wheel” sounds  brighter and fuller, but it’s darker and lonelier.
[8]

Thomas Inskeep: If you liked Let England Shake, you’ll like this, abetted by its having been recorded live (as part of an art exhibit) — there’s an added urgency in its sound.
[8]

Edward Okulicz: PJ Harvey’s such a unique presence on record that I feel like I’d know her riffwork anywhere, she can disquiet more or less at will. When her riffs feel like they’re pricking my skin, “The Wheel” throbs. I won’t pretend that I can’t hear this as being at least two points better if she’d sung the backing vocals herself — her voice has similar weaponry to her guitar — and that it gets boring, but for the most part the song moves, and I’m always down for Harvey making me think and sweat uncomfortably.
[6]

Brad Shoup: Harvey’s strumming at the close of each line reminds me of Hal Ketchum’s  “Small Town Saturday Night,” and that’s a huge plus. Her part of the  chorus is remarkable: a strident chunk of melody that’s very reminiscent  of Thom Yorke actually using his gifts. Radiohead tends to get this  woke, but there’s often a vocal remove, as if it were a little unseemly  to limn other people’s misery. (They wouldn’t be wrong.) The folky  clarity of Harvey’s refrain is also at a remove, but from another plane.  The reinforced sax-and-guitar figure, the buoyant backbeat, the vocal  force: it’s shellshock.
[8]

Will Adams: The scooped out low-end evokes the nostalgia of 70s rock, which fits with the political message. Brass and handclaps pierce through the mix to add the needed depth, while PJ Harvey surveys the scene and laments. Haunting, in a word.
[7]