Latest Release
- JUL 7, 2023
- 12 Songs
- To Bring You My Love · 1995
- Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea · 2000
- To Bring You My Love · 1995
- Rid of Me · 1993
- Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea · 2000
- Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea · 2000
- Is This Desire? · 1998
- Rid of Me · 1993
- Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea · 2000
- Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea · 2000
Essential Albums
- 2011
- After releasing two savage instant-classic LPs as a trio with drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Steve Vaughan as PJ Harvey, Polly Jean Harvey blew up her band but got to keep the name. When it was released in February 1995, To Bring You My Love felt like a tectonic shift—in scope, in sonics, in stakes—as the bare-bones minimalism of 1992’s Dry and 1993’s Rid of Me gave way to something bolder and more dramatic. Harvey took on U2’s producer (Flood), their management, and at least some of their ambition, trading grungy (as opposed to grunge-y) aesthetics for gowns and theatricality. But viewed from a distance, the album feels more of a piece with its predecessors than nearly anything that would come in her career subsequently. It’s a perfect fulcrum in a rich discography: Her presence is still feral, but tempered by the more nuanced textures and moods that she would come to explore further and eventually define herself by. The album’s key personnel—chiefly, her onetime bandmate John Parish and the Bad Seeds’ Mick Harvey—would become her most frequent and important collaborators over the ensuing decades, and To Bring You My Love reads like a road map of where they would later go. The opening title track sets the swampy, unsettling mood—a dark religious revival that channels the blues without mimicking it, forging a connection between American traditionalism and gothic English horror (see: the whispered, cursed incantation closing out “Down by the Water”—“Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water/Come back here, man, give me my daughter”). “Long Snake Moan” and “Meet Ze Monsta” channel the ferociousness Harvey built her reputation on, while “Working for the Man” and, particularly, closing track “The Dancer” point Harvey forward, exploring the power in relative restraint, of withholding in all the spots where she used to deploy exorcism.
- After introducing a trio sound that fan Warren Zevon likened to Bartok, PJ Harvey moved on to up the ante with producer Steve Albini. Bringing the use of soft-loud dynamics to a new, er, levels, Albini showcased the Harvey band's rumble in a way that made even their great debut, Dry, sound a little tame. Filled with sexual and social power and loathing, the record also put across a wicked sense of humor, as when a male band member howls a "Lick my legs, I'm on fire" mantra at the end of the title track or the outfit turns Dylan's "Highway 61 Revisited" into a sonic carnival ride. The blend was not unlike that of Polly Jean Harvey's hero Captain Beefheart, who was apparently pleased: The two have been confidantes for years.
Artist Playlists
- The British maverick who takes orders from no one.
- The creatively restless auteur finds a way of blending every sonic possibility.
- The musicians who've been equally eager to take risks.
- Collaborations and left turns from a rock voyager.
Live Albums
- 2011
Compilations
- 2007
- 1993
More To Hear
- Josh talks his love of Ween, and the song "Ride Like The Wind."
- Fan faves from Pearl Jam to PJ Harvey.
- Lifting the lid on undiscovered country.
About PJ Harvey
Polly Jean “PJ” Harvey is an award-winning British singer-songwriter and guitarist whose fearless music made her a standard-bearer for modern rockers in the ’90s and beyond. ∙ After forming the PJ Harvey trio in 1991, she won immediate acclaim for the lyric intensity and ferocious vocals of her debut LP, Dry, and its first single, “Dress.” ∙ In 1992, she was named Songwriter of Year and Best New Female Singer by Rolling Stone, which later ranked her sophomore LP, Rid Of Me, one of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. ∙ A seven-time Grammy nominee, she scored her first nominations for her debut solo LP, 1995’s To Bring You My Love, which featured “Down by the Water,” a No. 2 Modern Rock hit. ∙ She is the only artist to have won the Mercury Prize twice: for 2000’s Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea and 2011’s Let England Shake. ∙ The 2004 LP Uh Huh Her, which featured Harvey playing all the instruments except drums, was her highest charting US album, reaching No. 29 on the Billboard 200. ∙ Harvey was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for her service to music in 2013.
- HOMETOWN
- Dorset, England
- BORN
- October 9, 1969
- GENRE
- Alternative