FEATURE:
This Is Love
PJ Harvey’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea at Twenty
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IN terms of innovators and pioneering artists…
there are few as astonishing as PJ Harvey. Her album, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, is twenty on Friday (23rd October), and it is considered to be one of her greatest works. I have seen a few reviews that give it some criticism, and I just can’t understand that! Even if you are not comparing Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea to her previous albums, you have to admit that her fifth studio album is masterful! In 1998, while shooting a film as an actress for Hal Hartley in New York, Harvey felt inspired by the city and wrote several songs. This was during the time of Is This Desire?, and I feel that Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is a stronger and more varied album than Is This Desire? One gets the contrast of New York City and the English coast through the album – Harvey is from Bridport, Dorset. It is no surprise that New York’s influence looms large on Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, as Harvey lived there for several months – although Harvey said in interviews how it was not her ‘New York album’. Co-produced by Mick Harvey, Rob Ellis and Harvey, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is a phenomenal album with no filler at all! I think Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is a lot fuller and more diverse than any of PJ Harvey’s previous albums.
There is greater warmth and richness to Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, whereas albums before that were quite direct and darker. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea won Harvey the Mercury Prize in 2001, and it was certified platinum in the U.K. and Australia. I think, twenty years after it release, the album has the capacity to move and reveals new layers. From the amazing opening two tracks, Big Exit, and Good Fortune, to the stunning duet with Radiohed’s Thom Yorke, This Mess We’re In, there is so much brilliance on Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. This Is Love is, to me, one of the real highlights of the album and was released as the third single in October 2001. A perfect record to buy on vinyl, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is a stunning album where, in my view, Harvey is at her absolute best! Aside from a couple of mixed reviews, the album received huge praise upon its release in 2000, and it has continued to blow critics away years down the line. In their review of 2009, this is what AllMusic had to say:
“During her career, Polly Jean Harvey has had as many incarnations as she has albums. She's gone from the Yeovil art student of her debut Dry, to Rid of Me's punk poetess to To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire?'s postmodern siren; on Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea -- inspired by her stay in New York City and life in the English countryside -- she's changed again. The album cover's stylish, subtly sexy image suggests what its songs confirm: PJ Harvey has grown up. Direct, vulnerable lyrics replace the allegories and metaphors of her previous work, and the album's production polishes the songs instead of obscuring them in noise or studio tricks.
On the album's best tracks, such as "Kamikaze" and "This Is Love," a sexy, shouty blues-punk number that features the memorable refrain "I can't believe life is so complex/When I just want to sit here and watch you undress," Harvey sounds sensual and revitalized. The New York influences surface on the glamorous punk rock of "Big Exit" and "Good Fortune," on which Harvey channels both Chrissie Hynde's sexy tough girl and Patti Smith's ferocious yelp. Ballads like the sweetly urgent, piano and marimba-driven "One Line" and the Thom Yorke duet "This Mess We're In" avoid the painful depths of Harvey's darkest songs; "Horses in My Dreams" also reflects Harvey's new emotional balance: "I have pulled myself clear," she sighs, and we believe her. However, "We Float"'s glossy choruses veer close to Lillith Fair territory, and longtime fans can't help but miss the visceral impact of her early work, but Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea doesn't compromise her essential passion. Hopefully, this album's happier, more direct PJ Harvey is a persona she'll keep around for a while”.
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea mixes the raw energy of her debut, Dry, of 1991 and it has a new-found sense of melody. If you have not heard the album before, then I would encourage people to check it out. There is so much variation and depth to be found; each song is so engaging and fascinating, and Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is a work you will want to return to time and time again.
NME reviewed Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea upon its release and were full of praise:
“More pertinently, ‘Stories…’ is PJ Harvey’s best album since 1991’s ‘Dry’, a return to the feral intensity of that remarkable debut. For while it’s a cliché any frank woman singer-songwriter is ‘disturbed’ in some way, there’s no avoiding the fact Harvey’s last album, ‘Is This Desire?’, was unhappy; painfully-constructed third-person narratives buffeted by electro-industrial static.
‘Stories…’, however, is suffused with vitality. The clarity of the electric guitars played by Harvey, Rob Ellis and Mick Harvey is enough to make you fall in love with elemental rock all over again. When Thom Yorke adds his blustery yowl to ‘This Mess We’re In’, you wonder if it was the realisation he’d never write something as stark that prompted the itchy ambience of ‘Kid A’.
Harvey’s delighted at getting Yorke to sing, “Night and day I dream of making love to you now baby”, too. More than ever – check the snarling ‘Good Fortune’ and ‘You Said Something’ – she’s indebted to Patti Smith. Here, Harvey’s adopted her mentor’s positivity, so that the urban vignettes are filled with a lust for life. If the roar of ‘This Is Love’ represents the album’s sexual climax, the still moment in ‘One Line’ where she sings, “And I draw a line to your heart today, to your heart from mine/One line to keep us safe”, is its brilliant emotional fulcrum.
You could quibble Harvey has absolved her responsibilities by making an album earthed in the New York sound of 20 or 30 years ago. But when rock is so invigorating, so joyous about love, sex and living, all arguments are null and void. Hey, take a walk on her wild side”.
On its twentieth anniversary, I wanted to highlight PJ Harvey’s fantastic fifth studio album; a record that sounds as strong and stirring today as it did back in 2000! PJ Harvey would follow Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea with other amazing albums like White Chalk (2007), Let England Shake (2011), and The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016), but I think Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is right up there with her very best work – it might be the finest of them all! Happy twentieth anniversary to an album that gifted the first year of the twenty-first century…
WITH a work of sheer brilliance.