PJ Harvey burst forth from England as a fiery singer and guitar player, a woman unafraid to take the men in her life to task, and proud of it. In one single album, she outdid all those mere male alt-rockers around the globe (except perhaps for Nirvana… but only perhaps). Her music was intense, from the gut, explosive, raging, cathartic—and unforgettable. And her work remained essential long after she’d traded in her guitar for other sounds.
Here are five brief (LP-length or shorter) playlists of PJ Harvey. (I’d originally mapped this music out as three CD-length playlists, but I wasn’t satisfied with the listening experience. These songs need space to breathe. So now it’s five.) Enjoy.
Playlists 1 and 2: Hell Hath no Fury Like a Woman with a Guitar
PJ Harvey could shred her guitar with the best of them. I would have loved to see her live back in her early days.
The critical consensus on early PJ Harvey is that Rid of Me (1993) is the key album here, and it’s certainly the most in-your-face in terms of content and delivery. But I prefer her stellar debut, Dry (1992).
Playlist One offers a condensed version of Dry; Playlist Two provides highlights from Rid of Me and the companion piece 4-Track Demos (1993).
Playlists 3 and 4: The Album as a Novel in Stories
After conquering the alt-rock world with her guitar (at least from a critical perspective, if not a commercial one), PJ Harvey abruptly shifted gears. The loud guitar was replaced by acoustic rhythm guitar and shimmering electric organ, as she began moving toward more electronic sounds.
Moreover, her work became more crafted and calculating, with each album having a particular focus. Two of her very best albums in particular, To Bring You My Love (1995) and Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000), seem to function more as a whole than as a collection of separate song. Playlists Three and Four present abbreviated versions of these two albums, each of which feels like a novel in stories.
Note: Typically, a rock album that functions as a whole—with thematically linked songs that form some sort of narrative—is referred to as a concept album. But I hesitate to call any of PJ Harvey’s albums a concept album, because that term tends to conjure in my mind such silliness along the lines of, say, “aliens from the future invade earth by impersonating radio DJs,” or perhaps something as realistic as “alienated young man wakes up from a hallucinatory journey to find himself insane, idiotic, and enclosed by a wall.”
And PJ Harvey’s novel-albums are about real-life relationships—failed ones, more specifically. They don’t try to tell a chronological story so much as outline a sequence of intense emotional moments. And they are intensely powerful.
Oddly enough, the artist who was so great at making hard-rocking sounds early in her career, seemed to lose her touch later. The loudest songs on both these two albums, to my ears at least, tend to be the least convincing. But the quieter ones can just slay you.
Playlist 5: The Album as a Story Collection
Some of Harvey’s albums, on the other hand, come across to me more like story collections. Each song feels like a well-crafted, separate entity that inhabits a particular character or situation. Playlist Five features a selection from some of these albums.
More PJ Harvey
Let England Shake (2011) is considered a key PJ Harvey album by most critics. I don’t love it as much as I feel I’m supposed to, but I still admit it has some great songs. Sadly, I could only find the album in demo form on Spotify (strange…), so I’ve decided not to include it for now. I haven’t kept up with PJ Harvey’s latest releases, to be honest. (For the past several years I’ve allowed the retrospective listening project that has since become this website to occupy most of my music-listening time.)
Cover Art:
- Dry and Is This Desire?: Source, Discogs.com, Fair use.
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