{"id":491558,"date":"2019-10-23T09:20:12","date_gmt":"2019-10-23T15:20:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/?p=902587"},"modified":"2019-10-23T09:20:12","modified_gmt":"2019-10-23T15:20:12","slug":"song-you-need-to-know-pj-harveys-ethereal-cover-of-nick-caves-red-right-hand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/music-news\/song-you-need-to-know-pj-harveys-ethereal-cover-of-nick-caves-red-right-hand\/","title":{"rendered":"Song You Need to Know: PJ Harvey\u2019s Ethereal Cover of Nick Cave\u2019s \u2018Red Right Hand\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Nick Cave<\/a>\u2019s and PJ Harvey<\/a>\u2019s music have always shared a similar gloomy sensibility, but where his was often stark and gothic, hers was ethereal and impressionistic. The two artists\u2019 worlds collided in the mid Nineties; they collaborated on the morose \u201cHenry Lee\u201d<\/a> for Cave\u2019s album Murder Ballads<\/em> and dated for about a year, and their time together inspired several songs on Cave\u2019s The Boatman\u2019s Call<\/em>. Since then, they\u2019ve neared orbits \u2014 both writing songs for the same Marianne Faithfull album<\/a>, Harvey welcoming Cave\u2019s former Bad Seeds and Birthday Party bandmate and \u201cRed Right Hand\u201d cowriter Mick Harvey (no relation) into her band \u2014 but they\u2019ve kept a distance.<\/p>\n

Now PJ Harvey has covered Nick Cave\u2019s most recognizable song, \u201cRed Right Hand,\u201d for the upcoming soundtrack to the BBC2 series Peaky Blinders<\/em>. The song, which takes lyrical influence from Milton\u2019s Paradise Lost<\/em>, also serves as the series\u2019 theme music. On Cave\u2019s original recording, from his 1994 LP Let Love In<\/em>, he sings menacingly over a Latin rhythm and inchworm church organ melodies. It has been featured in several movies and TV shows over the past quarter century (notably it was in The X-Files<\/em>), and several artists have covered it for Peaky Blinders<\/em>, including Snoop Dogg<\/a> and Iggy Pop<\/a>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Harvey\u2019s rendition is an elegiac ballad, resting on piano notes that swipe out of the ether. Her voice moans and whines as she sings of the song\u2019s \u201ctall, handsome man in a dusty black coat with a red right hand.\u201d The first half of the song has a different kind of chilling effect than Cave\u2019s, and the music comes more into focus before fading out, making you want more. She doesn\u2019t sing all of the song\u2019s verses, but in this guise, Cave\u2019s tale of a cult-leader-type guru sounds more like a warning than a narration, and it lingers.<\/p>\n

She originally cut the song in 2014 for the series second season, but it\u2019s surfacing online again because of the soundtrack. At the time, music producer Flood sought her out for the cover to give the track a less \u201cAmerican\u201d feel (which is odd since Cave is an Australian who had lived in England for around three decades at that point.) \u201cWe\u2019re trying to make it feel much more European and British and PJ fits that bill perfectly,\u201d he told BBC6 at the time (via NME<\/a><\/em>). \u201cI phoned Polly up and she was very interested. We\u2019re trying to deconstruct all of Polly\u2019s material and then weave it through, it\u2019s very cutting-edge and modern.\u201d<\/p>\n

Earlier this year, Cave wrote about his breakup with Harvey for his Q&A website The Red Hand Files<\/a>. \u201cThe truth of the matter is that I didn\u2019t give up on PJ Harvey, PJ Harvey gave up on me,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThere I am, sitting on the floor of my flat in Notting Hill, sun streaming through the window (maybe), feeling good, with a talented and beautiful young singer for a girlfriend, when the phone rings. I pick up the phone and it\u2019s Polly. \u2018Hi,\u2019 I say. \u2018I want to break up with you.\u2019 \u2018Why?! I ask. \u2018It\u2019s just over,\u2019 she says. I was so surprised I almost dropped my syringe.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Peaky Blinders<\/em> soundtrack, which is due out November 15th, features the Cave and Harvey renditions of \u201cRed Right Hand,\u201d as well as songs by the White Stripes, Arctic Monkeys, and David Bowie, among others.<\/p>\n

via:: Rolling Stone<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Cave\u2019s and PJ Harvey\u2019s music have always shared a similar gloomy sensibility, but where his was often stark and gothic, hers was ethereal and impressionistic. The two artists\u2019 worlds collided in the mid Nineties; they collaborated on the morose \u201cHenry Lee\u201d for Cave\u2019s album Murder Ballads and dated for about a year, and their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-491558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-08-22 03:19:20","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KQZR - The Reel","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491558","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491558"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491558\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kqzr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}