John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey

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John Parish and PJ Harvey have made two albums together: 1996’s Dance Hall At Louse Point and 2009’s A Woman A Man Walked By.

The pair had previously been musical collaborators for several years. As a teenager growing up in rural England, Harvey contributed saxophone, guitar and backing vocals to Parish’s band Automatic Dlamini before forming her own band in 1991. Parish later served as co-producer, guitarist, percussionist and keyboard player on Harvey’s 1995 album To Bring You My Love and was featured heavily on her 1998 album Is This Desire?.

On Dance Hall at Louse Point, Parish wrote and played the music, while Harvey sang vocals and wrote the lyrics. The album was viewed by many of Harvey’s fans as a minor side project, perhaps due to the top billing accorded the more obscure Parish and her own accreditation as Polly Jean Harvey rather than the more widely recognised PJ Harvey name. Consequently, it sold more poorly than any of her solo releases, entering the UK charts at #46 and barely denting the U.S. Billboard charts at #178.

It yielded only one single, That Was My Veil, which spent a week at #75 in the UK charts. Harvey later admitted that she let Parish handle all promotional duties for the record because she was exhausted following a year of intense promotional activity for To Bring You My Love in 1995. Reportedly, bosses at Harvey’s Island Records label feared that the avant-garde venture was “commercial suicide”, despite it winning generally positive reviews.
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  • SucioVagabundo

    "The Soldier" is breathtaking. [2]

    February 2012

  • Deardeadfriend

    "The Soldier" is breathtaking.

    January 2012

  • ArjunArman45

    I think Dance Hall is way catchier than AWAMWB, a lot of the tracks on there get stuck in my head real easy

    October 2011

  • Peleiades

    vv i'm happy to see that. Dance Hall is possibly my all time favorite album since the first listen. i'm sad it's been overshadowed. AWAMWB is really great but it doesn't even begin to touch Dance Hall for me.

    August 2011

  • tinangelnyo

    Batabid, i agree with you completely on this

    July 2011

  • Batabid

    It took a real long time for 'dance hall at louse point' to properly "sink in". Now, it's one of the albums I play most. It's got a really peculiar atmosphere and the lyrics are absolutely brilliant, at times theatrical. The music is so visceral, and has this disoriented feel due to the chord changes and pj harveys often manic vocals. Theres not one dud on the album. I prefer it over 'a woman a man walked by' by quite a bit, although its not a bad album. Don't give up on 'dance hall at louse point'! It may not be catchy but then again thats not what its about....

    May 2011

  • dwlx

    ObShout: and an excellent album it is too, regardless of how it's tagged...

    March 2011

  • dwlx

    @RockyRevolution, this page is getting more hits because last.fm automatically rewrites new scrobbles to this version, even if people have tagged their album correctly. Doesn't mean most people are tagging it this way, only the first few idiots and that's what got stuck in the database.

    March 2011
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