Deep Dish: PJ Harvey “A Place Called Home” Single (Review)
“A Place Called Home” is one of my favorite songs off of the Stories from the City, Stories from the City album. If there is one thing that Polly does well, it is reinvent herself with each album. She’s said many times that she hates repeating herself. Stories is where Polly wanted to do something sparkly and poppy. It was huge success for Polly, providing her with her first Mercury Prize win September 2001. “A Place Called Home” would be her second single off of the record. Polly’s brand of pop is lush, beautiful, and ruckus. She would change her sound yet again for her following album, “Uh Huh Her”, to a much more unpolished garbage band sound.
“A Place Called Home” is one of the more mellow tracks on the album. The song starts with Polly’s driving guitar, layered with keyboards, bass, and drums. This album is not only a sonic change in Polly’s music, but also a theme change. From the dark, crunchy Is This Desire, which focused around almost 3rd person dark poetic tales, Stories focus seems to be centered around love. This was sparked during her stay in New York City for the making of the movie The Book of Life, in which she co-stars in. “A Place Called Home” definitely highlights this. Lyrically, the song has a longing tone. Polly sings about a lover in which calls out to keep up hope on them. The opening shows this, “One day I know we’ll find a place of hope, just hold on to me.”. It’s a full swirling track of sound. I absolutely love it. You can see the beginning ideas of this track from her recently released demos of this album. The demo has a much more fast paced drum sample behind it with just the accordion based keyboard sound backing it up, until the second verse when Polly’s guitar kicks back in. I love hearing how this track has grown from the demo.
This single contains two beautiful b-sides: “As Close As This” and “My Own Private Revolution”. “As Close As This” is a gorgeous track. It’s this beautiful, atmospheric track with a wash keyboard that become slightly dissonant by the second half, along with a soft bass line and guitar parts. Polly sings about spark of love between two people and that feeling of ecstasy that it bring, “… Make me run screaming down the wind, hopelessly in love again.”. It’s poetic and soft. I wish it was on the album. The last track on this single is the wonderful “My Own Private Revolution”. This song was teased on the EPK for the album, which was released with the “Good Fortune” single. It has these lusciously clean guitar which join in with this gritty bass line at the chorus. Polly’s vocals are so strong here. The lyrics clearly highlight Polly’s love for her career, “Fates have always one might say driven me from place to place… Love on the stage, love on the stage up and carried me away.”. It’s a beautiful track that I honestly think should have ended up on the album.
So far, none of these b-sides have been released to any streaming services or been given access for a digital download. The single can be found on eBay still if you are interested in a physical copy, like myself. You can find these wonderful tracks on YouTube. “A Place Called Home” is available through numerous services, both the studio version and the recently released demo version. I can’t say you should check one track out of the other, so my highlights are the entire single:
- “A Place Called Home”
- “As Close As This”
- “My Own Private Revolution”
My overall rating: 10 out of 10 places to call home…
