REVIEW: PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love (Island)

- Jon Steltenpohl

It's hard to say just what defines the music of Polly Jean Harvey. Maybe it's the distorted, flailing voice - or the searing guitars. Possibly, even the tortured string quartets. Whatever it is, PJ Harvey has it stamped boldly on every one of her songs.

This explains the strange feeling caused when "Down By the Water" first unleashed itself over the airwaves. The song shares little with Harvey's previous work except for the presence of Harvey herself. A look at the liner notes of To Bring You My Love reveals that the buzzing bass line is from Harvey's organ. The change in sound is marked by the exiting of "the PJ Harvey band" and the addition of John Parish and Joe Gore (Tom Waits) with Flood at the producer's helm and mixer's board.

The change of producer is cause for celebration. Although Rid of Me is a phenomenal work, it was hampered by Steve Albini's need to distort, and his tendency to bury the vocals on everything he touches. Fortunately, To Bring You My Love won't require a 4-track Demos to prove a point. With a competent producer, PJ Harvey's sound is wild, free, and clear. Each distortion and wretched note comes from Harvey wringing her own heart through the microphone, not the whim of a producer.

To Bring You My Love sounds very much like the soundtrack to a David Lynch movie. The liner art sets the mood with pictures of Harvey in a satin red dress against a green background. On the cover, she floats in the water with a cold, serene look on her face. With the help of Flood, To Bring You My Love is, at times, chillingly atmospheric. One expects to slip into a dream and witness a Lynchian one-armed midget dancing by with a tormented beauty by his side. At other times, Harvey rises up like the exaggerated shadow of a man with a knife and then crashes down like a rain of glass.

The best song on the album is "C'mon Billy". It's an epic, western of a song with an incessant guitar strum backed by John Parish's expert percussion. Harvey's voice is mirrored with a string quartet, and she sings with driving passion for an absent lover. By the end of the song, her pleading rises until Harvey just wails over and over "C'mon on Billy, come to me!". By the time the song ends, you feel drained. Amazing for a piece that is less than three minutes long.

The rest of the album is filled with songs that feel much different but accomplish the same thing. To Bring You My Love catapults PJ Harvey beyond the ranks of ordinary musicians. It is an album that is remote but engaging, disfigured but beautiful, abrasive but caressing. Like her first album, Dry, To Bring You My Love has simplicity as its core. Like all of Harvey's work, the album is focused on relationships gone wrong. Each song is a pageant of loss and deception. For those who are new to PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love might be a bit of a surprise, but fans of Harvey's previous work will cherish To Bring You My Love as a masterpiece.