Word: harvey
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...open meeting of the full Faculty of Arts and Sciences yesterday afternoon, Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield '53 publicly challenged President Neil L. Rudenstine about the pervasiveness of political correctness at Harvard...
...better, then, that Harvey follows it with "No Girl So Sweet," a blistering whirl of guitars and percussion that erupts into a signature banshee-howl, and finally concludes with the album's title track, which restates all of the questions with which she and the record embarked. "Is this desire?" she asks, then interjects "enough, enough!" as though over-whelmed by her own album's energy: Harvey needs space, in the end, to clear her thoughts and assess her position. Is desire an endpoint, or was it all along the process by which an invisible endpoint was sought--heartening...
...signal virtue and surest proof of Harvey's talent is that, despite an expansive range of pitches and moods, her craft always combines precision with personality; like a jeweler or carpenter, she preserves the integrity of each song with specific and taut strokes, but incorporates enough elements of personal style--distorted vocals, plodding bass or cavernous echo--that the artist cannot be misidentified. "My Beautiful Leah," in which a phlegmy and diseased voice seeks clues to track the route of an aban-doing lover, lumbers thick and ungainly as a sauropod; "The Garden," by contrast, lilts and whispers like...
...This Desire? grows a bit tired in its third quarter, which the structure of Harvey's 2,000-mile framework probably demands, but which nonetheless threatens the totality of the record's spell. "The River" in particular suffers from an inertia rare for Harvey. Its loping murmur is appropriate to the title image, and it's fun to hear her tinkering with brass, but a rather rote delivery ("And they came from the river/and they came to the road") and subjective vagueness (who is "they," and why does it become "we"?) make the song tiresome and opaque...
...This Desire? never specifies the exact destination for which Harvey was reaching. The ride, though, is thrilling and fascinating, her riddles more powerful for remaining in code. Like Madonna's Ray of Light, which illuminated much but kept some spaces sacred, Harvey's album uses rock at its most modern and electronic to reveal--almost--an artist more fully and humanly herself than we have previously seen her. Even we who have loved all her incarnations will take pleasure and interest in what Polly Jean lays out for us here. God bless her--she tears our hearts out every time...