If I was writing this with my throat, it’d come out all gravelly. If I was writing this with my sinuses, absolutely nothing would flow. If I was writing this with my capacity for energy throughout the day, this post would ended after three words. Basically, I’m not well. It could be the common cold, it could be the bubonic plague. Either way, it is for reasons of illness that this one will be fairly short.
For as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to entertain. Not necessarily in the way that musicians, comedians and trashy celebrities do, but more in the sense of hosting occasional dinner parties. Sure, being magically handed trashy celebrity status wouldn’t go amiss – I’d probably relish the nineteen-and-a-half minutes of it before I told the paparazzi to effin do one, shaved my head and ended up in rehab. I digress, I enjoy cooking at home and I like it when others find joy in my efforts.
As ever though, I’m trapped in my mental cage of frustration and clever forward planning. Unlike the countless peers I share Earth time with, I’ve decided to begin investing in a future property rather than renting a present one. My current kitchen time is shared with parents (for aforementioned budgetary and long-term investment reasons) leaving my lack of personal freedom to invite, to cook and to entertain further highlighted by those around me. Yes, I know, don’t compare your life to others and yadda yadda and et cetera, but it’s natural for things to weigh on the mind when all my friends have slow cookers and I don’t. I just have a knife block and a fancy cutlery set sitting in the loft, waiting to go home… when and wherever that may be.
So the legend goes, PJ Harvey recorded an album last year whilst she and her band were locked in a cabinet for three months. Okay, perhaps it wasn’t a cabinet. Perhaps it was a cabin. Or a shed. In fact, I think it was some kind of public art installation with a viewing window, like a cross between the Big Brother house and a David Blaine stunt. Either way, the legend also tells of an absence of creative stimuli, meaning that all recorded material was essentially the product of beige walls, solitary confinement and whatever conversations managed to form.
One such beige-walled anthem is this, and if you can get past the Eastern European scenery and sheep farming, you can start doing your best to piece together disparate strings of words, and fail. Interestingly enough, the whole song together works nicely, further nailing shut the coffin containing my own false sense of creativity. If they can create this (along with the rest of what I assume will be a more than decent album) with no stimulus, there’s absolutely fuck all hope for me to produce something worthy.
PJ Harvey – The Wheel
Jamie Walsh 
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