#197 The Best Album of 2000, Round 5, Match #123: PJ Harvey vs. Modest Mouse
Hey folks,
Today’s Best Album of 2000 match is:
#2 PJ Harvey, STORIES FROM THE CITY, STORIES FROM THE SEA
Listen on Spotify or YouTube
vs.
#7 Modest Mouse, THE MOON & ANTARCTICA
Listen on Spotify or YouTube
To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email (kentmbeeson@hey.com) or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.
We have a brand-new Designated Cheerleader today, it’s for STORIES FROM THE CITY, STORIES FROM THE SEA, and it’s from @megabrow12.bsky.social! Take it away!
Music and food. Nothing else can take me back to certain place and time like music or food. Give me a Lion Bar and I’m age 8, halfway up a mountain with my Dad and getting to eat the chocolate bar that I was allowed to chose myself in the shop that morning. Give me a California roll and I’m at the end of the pier in San Francisco eating the best meal of my life. Give me a bottle of Budweiser and I’m age 15, throwing up in my parents sink for the first (and last) time (please do not give me a bottle of Budweiser). Play me Number of the Beast by Iron Maiden and I’m in the Prince of Orange in Chelmsford drinking Newcastle Brown Ale with my sister and her goth mates. Play me I Think We’re Alone Now by Tiffany and I’m snogging Georgina Hoff in the 3rd year (9th grade?) school disco. Play me Songs In The Key Of Life, and I’m having my first kiss with my wife. Play me Ghosteen by Nick Cave and I’m walking through muddy fields with the dog, in the rain, crying my eyes out after weeks of trying to be the strong one following the death of my wife’s sister (please do not play me Ghosteen by Nick Cave more than once a year). Music and food. Every time.
By the year 2000 I’d lost interest in PJ Harvey. The first couple of albums were good – all fun drums and attitude. But then, just as the rest of indie music was becoming more fun, there was an album which was all serious and slow and there were no fun drums anymore.
This is fine. Not everything is for everyone – so PJ and I moved on, apart, and the world continued to turn.
Meanwhile – as PJ Harvey was making boring albums – I got a proper girlfriend
She then rudely went to University for 3 years which should, according to literally everyone if you asked them or not, have been the end of it. Long distance relationships don’t work they said. Everyone. All the time. No, really – all the time.
However – being not quite such a moron that I didn’t know when I was onto a good thing we survived 3 years of me living a work life Monday to Thursday and a student life Friday to Sunday.
Next on the list of course, was some travel. Being a middle class student she was obliged to go travelling after university – did I want to go with her? I did. I shouldn’t, everyone said. Everyone. Really. 24 hours a day in each other’s pockets after 3 years of long distance – recipe for disaster. All couples that go travelling together split up they said. Repeatedly. Whether you asked them or not. Being something of a moron, I wangled unpaid leave from my job and worked out that I could go round the world on the 3 credit cards that some grownups who ran actual credit card businesses allowed me to have.
Thus, in early 2002 I was driving through New Zealand with my still girlfriend in our rented Toyota Corolla listening to the 2 mix tapes we bought in a service station bargain basket. One was Shine…I dunno 38 or something by that point, and the other was another random ‘indie best of’. I couldn’t name any of the other songs on that tape other than a really good Powderfinger number, but the 2nd track was Good Fortune by PJ Harvey. The first time it came on it blew my tiny mind – the fun drums were back! ‘my’ PJ was back! I made my girlfriend re-wind it at least 3 more times. Pointless, since we had all of New Zealand to drive up and only 2 tapes – I would know every word of every song by the time we hit 90 mile beach – but it was so good it had to be done.
I had to wait until I was back in England to hear the rest of the album – and it was great. All of it. The whole thing works from start to finish. And has the perfect track sequence. It’s probably my favourite album of 2000 out of the many from that year I love – it’s definitely my favourite PJ. Of course some of that is nostalgia – but if we exclude nostalgia from our assessment of music then I don’t want to play anymore. I have no interest in a cold attempt at valuing an album objectively.
All I know is that the many times a year I put this PJ Harvey album on, I am transported by to that place and time. How the relationship worked out doesn’t really matter – maybe she was the love of my life, maybe it petered out once we were back in the humdrum of every day, maybe one of our heads was turned by someone else. What matters is that the music takes me back to a place where I’m in love – 100% fully committed in love. A love old enough to feel real and new enough to still feel exciting. And there’s no better feeling in the world friends. Music and Food.
(vote PJ).
Thank you for that, @megabrow12.bsky.social!
As always, click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.
Yesterday, #4 Radiohead, KID A defeated #5 Yo La Tengo, AND THEN NOTHING TURNED ITSELF INSIDE-OUT, 128-126-3. Probably obvious that, with 257 total votes, that’s the most of any 2000 match, and I honestly don’t think it will be bested by any of the remaining matches. But we’ll see!
I asked that you make yesterday’s match exciting, and you came through. Thank you!
Kent