B-Sides, Demos & Rarities

To say that this 59-song release is a major document is a major understatement. This odds-and-sods accretion of material works because Harvey has gone through so many rewarding phases that this is more like several very long and cohesive albums than, say, twenty-seven versions of “All Along The Watchtower.” We get a stretch of Harvey alone and then her main collaborator, John Parish, shows up and we get a heavy dose of what sounds like classic Harvey, except it just isn’t stuff we’ve heard. A few of the songs are weaker than what’s on the albums but the overall quality here is so high that this three-hour collection actually feels more consistent than some of her late period albums. The outtakes also highlight her various bands—“Losing Ground” is a cover of a Rainer song that shows Eric Drew Feldman doing his best demented carny organ player routine. In the last ten tracks, the tone changes as Harvey moves into her visionary of the hills phase. We get less guitar, and more autoharp and piano, and the growl is replaced by a strong, clear head voice, much more tonally pure than what came before. This collection makes the best case I’ve heard for mid-to-late period Harvey, as bunching it all in one place gives it a coherence I’d never sensed before. Calm Harvey has a power that feels distinct from the visceral rush of young, booted Harvey. The very last song on the album, a stoned piano and voice cover from 2019 of Nick Cave + The Bad Seeds’s “Red Right Hand,” is the big Spotify hit right now, which feels like a wild poetic justice. Cave is her colleague, ex, foil, antipode and sort of shadow collaborator, and hearing her remaking his big TV hit as ghost music feels right.