Also this issue:

Oh, the Humanity
International male Vikter Duplaix says no way, computer.
-A.D. Amorosi

Jig Stars
Danú turns heads by doing the same old thing.
-Mary Armstrong

Review: Common, Gang Starr, Talib Kweli, Floetry
-Elisa Ludwig

Review: Philadelphia Orchestra
-Peter Burwasser

Ike
-Patrick Rapa

Danielle Howle
-M.J. Fine

The Eyeliners
-Sam Adams

King Crimson
-A.D. Amorosi

March 6-12, 2003

music

Big Entrance

PJ Harvey's pal John Parish makes Animals Move.

by A.D. Amorosi

From the mournful beauty of its first notes (Clare MacTaggart's sullen violin) to its blood-vessel-blasted finale (the lustful, passionate screeching of Polly Jean Harvey on "Airplane Blues"), John Parish's true debut, How Animals Move, is a magnificently tuned obsession, a theatrical, melancholy work teeteringly childlike yet tempestuously sensuous.

His multitextural guitar-army orchestration for Harvey made his name household among the alt-eerie likes of Sparklehorse and Eels (whom he's produced). His score for the film Rosie and his Polly-Jean team-up, Dance Hall at Louse Point, smartly ride the range from Fahey-esque faintness to Frippe-like freneticism.

"It's funny that I tend to be painted as fairly analytical and intellectual in my approach," says Parish from his kitchen in Bristol, England, soon after his kids have gone to nursery and the breakfast stuff is packed away. "Funny, because I simply respond to things -- my music, producing others -- with pure instinct. If there's a part that moves me, all I know is that it works. I can't figure why."

While it is, perhaps, a subjective "intelligence" given over to instrumentals that finds his sounds so neatly arranged in the mind's eye, Parish's sense of the dramatic is undeniable. Growing up with theater-working parents influenced him greatly. ("By the time I was 14, I was usually playing drums in the pit orchestra. A lot of it was pretty hokey.") This pointed his writing/arranging capabilities toward the theatrical. "With no words telling you what to think, the listener tends toward visual imagery," he says. "I tend to write pretty dynamic and/or atmospheric stuff."

Parish's sense of the Grand and the Guignol-ish is what led Harvey to his door in the late 1980s while he was fronting his band, Automatic Dlamini. "Polly came to shows, gave me tapes of stuff she was writing," says Parish of the then-17-year-old's maturation from hometown girl to holy terror. She joined Parish's band, playing guitar and singing backgrounds until she formed her own trio. Parish, meanwhile, has continued with her, as both mentor and collaborator. Their dynamic relationship throughout Harvey's oeuvre is best personified by six-string horrorscapes like "Rope Bridge Crossing" and the duet disc Dance Hall.

"I'm very proud of that record. It was a true two-way collaboration," he recalls. "Apart from one day when Mick Harvey came in, it was just me and Polly. We made a very uncompromising record, challenging each other to look for something that hadn't been done by us, or anyone else, before."

Parish succeeds with this solo CD in much the same way he did with Dance Hall by making haunting music along the lines of composer Lech Jenkowski mixed with other Parish faves Giant Sand, Beefheart, Television and Bowie. How Animals Move (which takes its name from an old '50s textbook about the mechanics of mammals) is a free, somber -- even sexy -- work.

"If I called Animals sexy, it would seem narcissistic," says Parish, who finds both Grace Kelly's kiss at the beginning of Rear Window and Ellen Barkin's crooked smile sensually iconographic. "But I like your take."

Recorded live with "a lot of spill and shared harmonics" in one big room by his 11-man band (including many of the same Portishead folk who tour with him), Animals flows seamlessly through different atmospheres, textures and dynamics. Sparse melodic pieces ("Absolute Beauty," "Without Warning") are accentuated by their solitary qualities. Other more deadpan sung-spoken works like "Shrunken Man" and "Bernadette" seem blank and resigned. ("Sometimes the passion is in the restraint," says Parish quickly.)

Yet for all its sleepy, sweetly sinister polish and spartan serenity, this disc is, overall, a lovely lumbering work as much personified by the raw husky blues of Harvey's noisy "Airplane" as it is the doubled, troubling rhythm and pop of "Stable Life."

"Animals is beautiful, ugly, graceful, clumsy, uncompromising, inviting," offers Parish. "Take one home with you today."

John Parish plays Thu., March 6, 9 p.m., free, with Robots in Disguise, The TLA, 334 South St., 215-922-1011.