Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

PJ Harvey

album cover

The Culmination of a Long Journey

By the time she got to this album, her sixth, British rocker Polly Jean Harvey had traveled to great extremes in search of a sound. She'd attracted attention right off the bat, with the sirenlike wail of Dry, her 1992 debut, and then Rid of Me (1993). Soon, though, she abandoned the abrasion of that period to cast herself as a postmodern blues shouter (To Bring You My Love, 1995). Then she went arty, singing against a backdrop of torch-song spookiness (Is This Desire?, 1998). Each lunge came complete with brazen, hypersexual lyrics that earned her comparisons with Patti Smith (see p. 719) and the loyal admiration of critics. Commercial success, though, was another story. Still is.

Harvey eventually stopped trying to develop elaborate new settings, and that's when her great music happened. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea pulls together salient characteristics from her various experiments, and channels them into messy and supremely attitudinal rock and roll. It's a work of summation and assimilation; though several of the previous albums occasionally reach higher heights, this one is where her varied musical interests come together.

The line from Stories that got the most ink—"I can't believe life is so complex, When I just want to sit here and watch you undress," from "This Is Love," one of the blues-tinged numbers—offers a clue about Harvey's mind-set. She's as blunt as any man when talking about what she's lusting for, and quite happy to set off on her own to go get it. Stories is a chronicle of those journeys, many of which happen in New York. Sometimes she tears off and finds love, or lust; sometimes she stumbles into profound insights, and sometimes she winds up in a drunken rage, wandering the downtown streets in the wee hours, beset by lingering disappointments and not quite able to sort out the mess she's in. This, it turns out, makes for entrancing music.

Genre: Rock
Released: 2000, Island
Key Tracks: "This Is Love," "Beautiful Feeling," "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore"
Catalog Choice: To Bring You My Love
Next Stop: Cat Power: The Greatest
After That: The Breeders: Pod
Book Page: 346

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Comments:

#1 from Jan Armstrong, Australia - 08/04/2009 12:56

P.J Harvey is one of the few unadorned and frank female songwriters of recent years; a cross between Laura Nyro/Carly Simon/Dory Previn. “This Mess We’re In” is an example of her hypnotic powers, examining intimate emotional detritus and banal existentialism.

1000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die