Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
PJ Harvey
Published by Checkout.com
No one could really be sure where Polly Jean Harvey would venture
next, but wherever it was, it was bound to be someplace honest. Physically, she
spent some time in New York while writing Stories From the City, Stories From
the Sea, so while some of the place names have changed, the rugged emotional
terrain is thankfully much the same. Following the dark, textural labyrinth of
Is This Desire? Harvey's latest sounds scaled-back; and while the power
of words well sung has always been at the forefront, these Stories offer
even more directness as they connect our hearts to hers.
The temptation with Stories is to think of it as "the New York
album," as a return to Rid of Me, or as the stuff Harvey wrote while
listening to lots of Patti Smith. But to use any such tight wrappers is to forget
that this is a complex artist who's made a career of wriggling free of them.
In "Good Fortune" Harvey talks about enjoying success and adjustment,
and while brittle guitar sheets mix with her tough vocals to invite comparisons
to the New York anti-diva, this is also ground that bears the tread of Harvey's
own distinguished shoes. "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore"
strikes at the self-serving streets with the driving gurgle of her patently
grieving rock, and bears even more of the seething growl that is distinctly
PJ Harvey. Where her scenes once seemed to jump from the pages of romanticism, Harvey
now strips the stage of flourishes, leaving the lovers to speak their simple
truths. "This world all gone to war/All I need is you tonight," she
admits over a barren bed of sounds on "One Line." She echoes the same
on the sludgy "This Is Love" with "I can't believe that the axis
turns/On suffering when you taste so good." On "This Mess We're In,"
it's Radiohead's Thom Yorke who provides Harvey's somber tale of a dangerous
liaison. The setting per se is the Manhattan skyline, but most of these stocking-clad
Stories block the outside world like a black sheet to the morning sun. If the closing track "We Float" is an indication, hope and happier
chords are in Harvey's cards, but don't start calling her Sarah McLachlan. The
chorus' piano-propelled promise to "Take life as it comes" earns its
right to relax by emerging from dark verses that bear the troubled stamp of
Harvey's not-so-distant past. Whatever traces of lineage streak the style of
Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, no one shoots it straighter
than PJ Harvey, and in one way or another it can always be said that she was
here first.