Each Friday I pick a song–new, old, borrowed, blue–that’s been on my mind and in my ears, and write a short post about it.

There are two songs for this week:

PJ Harvey — “Teclo”

Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band — “Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles”

Listen to that melody.  PJ Harvey’s is a haunting lament for a dead lover: “Let me ride on his grace for a while.” Beefheart’s is a lilting sea chantyish tune of longing and confused love. They’re the same melody.  As my friend Tim pointed out, PJ Harvey has a history in the transformation of Beefheart’s music. “Rid of Me” reinhabits the “Don’t you wish you never met her” of “Dirty Blue Gene”, reclaiming the misogyny of the latter and imagining it into a bitter and psychopathic revenge tale. In both cases, the musical borrowing is matched by lyrical dialogue, which opens up a new texture to all four songs. You don’t need to know the Beefheart to draw meaning from the PJ Harvey songs, but when you make the connection, none of the songs sounds the same again. The meanings shift, and possibilities open up. These kinds of connections excite the hell out of me, and it’s rare in rock ‘n’ roll music that they’re made so ingeniously as PJ Harvey makes them. She’s an artist who merges her individual talent and imagination with a deep immersion in the traditions of her medium.