FilmAlbums and Books
A Dog Called Money (dir. seamus murphy) In 2015 PJ Harvey did something unexpected. Following a career-high album (2011’s Let England Shake), the notoriously private musician, who’s always refused to explain her lyrics and creative steer, allowed us, the public, to watch her record her next record, The Hope Six Demolition Project, from behind one-way glass in a special studio built in the basement of Somerset House. The album was released in 2016, a few months after an accompanying book of Harvey’s poetry called The Hollow of the Hand, and a collection of photos from filmmaker/photographer Seamus Murphy. All of these elements came from Harvey and Murphy visiting Kosovo, Afghanistan and the poor areas of Washington D.C., and A Dog Called Money has until now been the missing part of this curious jigsaw puzzle. It’s curious because Harvey still hasn’t given any interviews regarding the project, rendering the intentions of the experiment unclear. In that sense, they’re no clearer with the arrival of Seamus Murphy’s making-of documentary: we see Harvey and her band record in their basement box as invisible onlookers stare through the window, yet the influence/purpose of the voyeurs is not once addressed – they seem, in fact, to have zero affect on the process or the outcome of the music. Equally, Harvey isn’t about to start spelling out the relevance of – or connection between – Kosovo, Afghanistan and D.C., and how and why they became the root material for Hope Six. Characteristically for Harvey, A Dog Called Money is smarter and more stealth than that, and while still ambiguous on the whole, it slowly starts to fill in some of the blanks that frustrated some when they first heard her new record in its finished form that still felt half complete from time to time. It was Harvey’s say-what-you-see, literal lyrics that grated most on the record
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– they make a lot more sense now that we can see through her eyes as the film continually flits between Murphy’s travel footage from these decimated communities and the recording of these simple words in the studio. It begs the question if Harvey could have made sense of the poverty she was seeing beyond listing what she found. On a base level, the addictive viewing of A Dog Called Money gives us a rare, candid insight into who Polly Harvey is (a woman whose intense creativity can overshadow her laid back demeanour, who makes dirty jokes and mucks around in the studio with her producer, Flood), and if that was all this film did, it would be enough. More to its credit, then, is that it pulls the album it’s about into a new realm of appreciation. Hope Six may still not be PJ Harvey’s greatest record, but as part of a greater whole A Dog Called Money will have you revisiting it as soon as the credits roll. Stuart Stubbs
The Plural Atmosphere — Stewart Lupton (third man) “I did not mean to leave the fold, only digress.” The line stands out and sits heavy in The Plural Atmosphere, the first collection of poetry by Stewart Lupton, the late singer of Jonathan Fire*Eater. This small chapbook is a melancholy testament to the talents and troubles of a man who left music and the world too soon. Lupton and Jonathan Fire*Eater might have been a footnote had they not been canonized in Lizzy Goodman’s instant classic Meet in the Bathroom. That book explained how Lupton’s band laid the groundwork for the rock and roll revival in New York City in the early 2000s. But while the scene took off and Lupton’s bandmates formed the Walkmen, Lupton spiraled into heroin
addiction and mental illness, disappearing from the culture he helped create. As bands came and went and music evolved, Lupton fought to get well in various treatment programs. Unbeknownst to many, he also committed himself to poetry. Third Man published The Plural Atmosphere this October with a reissue of Jonathan Fire*Eater’s influential 1996 EP Tremble Under Boom Lights. Lupton won some important, harrowing perspective in the decades between the two. The poet and the songwriter are both fixated on nightlife, but while the songwriter is looking for an adventure, the poet is focused on reaching dawn with his head on straight. The similarities between the two, meanwhile, reflect Lupton’s insuppressible star power – the man had a theatrical sense of imagery and a smart sense of humor. That’s most apparent on “The Yellow Square Works”, a biting account of a man working through a meditation exercise with mixed results. “Clear Blue Tea” is the collection’s finest poem, and the most brutal to read. Lupton wrote it while in psychiatric treatment in Los Angeles. The introduction notes that he read it at an open mic night days before taking his own life in 2018. Recurring phrases from The Plural Atmosphere come together – “ape song”, the grim rhetorical question “What is this life, anyway, but an absurd case of the bends?”. He quotes himself on the Boom Lights song ‘The Search for Cherry Red’: “I remember it all, the fangs and the claws”. I see you, Stewart. You wear your headaches like a crown. Your thoughts become time; time, age. You are the cough woven in the recording of the piano recital by an undisputed genius. The poem is a visceral summation of the man’s life’s work. Posthumous collections such as these can be hard to read, but The Plural Atmosphere is an important and necessary addition to Lupton’s legacy. It’s a reminder that even when a stream breaks off from the main river, if you follow its current, you can still find flecks of gold flowing through the water. Colin Groundwater