PJ Harvey Returns…

 

Who else is excited as I am at the prospect of a spanking new PJ Harvey record?

 

Yes, the daddy-long legged rock ‘n’ roll siren is back…and I for one cannot wait for her return next year.

 

‘A Woman A Man Walked By’ will be released on March 30, in collaboration with John Parish…And having had the divine priviledge to hear the album a few months ago, I can confidently announce that Polly’s latest material is a breathtaking return to form, harking back to her early ‘Dry’ days.

 

For me, PJ Harvey represents everything a female artist should be but rarely ever achieves. Having written a fair few ‘women in rock’ features in my time, I guess my thoughts on Polly our best summed up through some words I wrote a few years ago:

 

“Where Polly Harvey succeeds is in her celebration of female sexuality in a man’s world. When the long-legged Harvey stood on stage in Reading Festival in 2001, skimmed by her tight mini-skirt and suggestive black boots, rocketing out raw thrills on her guitar, an iconic picture was created. The guitar need not be a phallic representation of the male ego: it could be used and manipulated by women to create a different sound. This wasn’t a bid to be accepted or different, it was a display of equal expression. When ‘Is This Love’ kicks in on ‘Stories From The City…’ exploding through the speakers with thrashing, grinding guitars, the deep raw expression of unashamed desire punches a mark. It’s opinionated. It’s unapologetic. And it takes no prisoners.”

 

In a current pop-climate stodgily saturated with the likes of Madonna and Katy Perry, her graceful presence has been sorely missed. Roll on 2009.

 

In the meantime, lets enjoy one of my favourite Polly tracks ‘Horses In My Dreams’, with those dreamtalking, dreamwalking lyrics:

 

Rode a horse around the world
Along the tracks of a train
Broke the record, found the gold
Set myself free again

I have pulled myself clear

 

 

For girls about to rock (in Saudi): We salute you

What with Katy Perry admitting she kissed a girl and liked it; Ida Maria declaring she likes you so much better when you’re naked; and Madonna currently indulging in her own brand of post-divorce pelvic-thrust therapy, you’d be forgiven for assuming that the womens lib movement in music has finally rendered its female artists free to express themselves in whichever ways they’d like.

 

Yes, the arguments and debates still rumble over – and well they might…the music industry itself is nowhere near it’s deserved equilibrium  - as my opening paragraph demonstrates: Does a female artist has to go to extremes in order to garner front page attention? As Alison Goldfrapp articulately pinpointed when I interviewed her a year ago for Clash Magazine, addressing the cult-rise of Beth Ditto: “does a woman have to be an extreme in order to get on the front page of NME?”

 

For those women restricted by the religious fundamentalism of their male aggressors in the Middle East, the question is far more vital: “Will any woman ever enjoy the freedom of making music like her male counterparts?”

 

It’s a question being asked in Saudi Arabia by a group of four revolutonary young girls who are daring the impossible – they’re daring to rock.

 

The reality for these girls in Jeddha, Saudia Arabia is a far cry from the MTV shenenegans of newly-crowned pop princess Katy Perry: They cannot perform in public. They cannot pose for album covers. Their jam sessions are conducted in secret, in fear of offending the religious authorities.

 

But for Saudi-Arabia’s first ever girl rock group Accolade, it’s a jam session worth fighting for.

 

The band’s first single ‘Pinnochio’ has become an underground hit in their home country, busy downloading the track from the girls MySpace.

 

The contradictions aren’t lost on the band. 19-year-old Lead singer Lamia may have a pierced eyebrow, but under Saudi law, she isn’t even allowed to drive a car.

 

“In Saudi, yes, it’s a challenge,” she admits. “We’re crazy. But we wanted to do something different.”

“What we’re doing — it’s not something wrong, it’s art, and we’re doing it in a good way. We respect our traditions.”

As in Iran, the under 25s make up a whopping 60% of the nation’s population. In Saudi at least, that majority is beginning to speak up. In 2008, there is a burgeoning rock scene, and a thriving hip hop fan base…and now they have their first all-female rock band.

 

Support the cause by clicking onto their MySpace. It may not be entirely your cup-of-tea, but quite frankly, if that’s your main concern then you’re totally missing the point here. Whether you love or hate these girls’ music is irrelevant. The fact is they’re making music.

 

There’s a tiny butterfly flapping its wings in Jeddha…lets make it a f***ing earthquake:

 

www.myspace.com/accoladeofficial

The circus comes to town…

 

 

Oh, it’s a circus alright…

 

I’m not sure what I found more surprising on Saturday night. Britney Jean Spears’ car-crash “appearance” on The X-Factor (“appearance” being the operative word as her gurning lip-syncing left “listening” a little tricky) or the public’s shocked reaction to it. What was everyone expecting? Leona Lewis? The girl even made last week’s Same Difference Stepford zygotes look accomplished…

 

As ITV reminded us during every ten minute advert-break, the princess of pop “was BACK”…cue hysterical screaming from the studio audience and redundant retrospective flashbacks of Spears’ career of yore – redundancy being the term-du-jour – as millions of prime time viewers (12.8 million to be exact) sat back on their sofas, wholly aware that Ms Spears seems barely aware what date her next custody-battle is on, let alone where she is, what she really wants to be doing, or what she should be singing; yet deliciously lapping up the spectacle like driving past a hit and run on the M4.

 

Was it really such a surprise that Ms Spears was clearly not back where she belongs?

 

Surprise or not, the studio audience wooped and hollared as the judges gallantly rose to give her a standing ovation – less applauding a triumphant return to form and more clapping out of sheer relief that she managed to fly to london in one-piece, turn up to the studio on time and at least get her lifeless body on stage at the right time (even if her mind and spirit seemed to be somewhere else entirely.) Bravo, Britney is still alive! Three cheers for Xanax!

 

As the fawning Dermot O’ Leary tried to disguise his bemusement, Britney Spears gave confused and apathetic answers to all of his two questions. Did she enjoy watching the contestants sing? “Its really fun to be back in London” she disconnectedly replied.

 

Previously to this in-depth Q & A, we were treated to Britney’s comeback performance – her first in six whole years, we were reminded again and again like senile deliquants. After an hour of mindless hype we were finally presented with the Toxic icon herself, clad in a pop-staple outfit of cabaret-inspired black hot pants and fish net stockings…a clumsy attempt at emulating her heroine Madonna…who clumsily stole the look from a heroine who can actually sing and dance, Liza Minnelli. The homecoming queen then proceeded to badly lip-sync whilst she stamped her way through a bizarre dance routine that seemed to have more in common with Strictly’s John Sergeant…

 

Bizarre not only because the song in question ‘Womanizer’ seemed to have just one word to remember throughout…”wo-ma-nizer/wo-ma-nizer/wo-ma-nizer/oh, you get the picture”, but perhaps more significantly because this performance seemed to sum up her own descent into puppet show monotony. Watching Spears grapple with miming inane lyrics and losing spectacularly, I couldn’t help but interprete it as an apt metaphor for the current circus that surrounds her and our own celebrity-quaffing collusion in it. The words coming out of her mouth on Saturday night weren’t hers – but were they ever hers to begin with? Who the hell is the real Britney? Does anyone even care anymore?

 

Having produced an album that seems to address the ‘circus’ of her own life, but disappointingly addresses none of it, we seem further away from understanding just what went wrong with America’s darling…the epitomy of their deluded selfmade dream…now nothing more than a  performing seal, with a father controlling every asset and civil-freedom on “her behalf” it seems the X factor is not the only stage she now lip-syncs on.