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Stories From the City Stories From the Sea [VINYL]
 
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Stories From the City Stories From the Sea [VINYL]

PJ Harvey | Format: Vinyl
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)

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Product details

  • Vinyl (23 Oct 2000)
  • Number of Discs: 1
  • Label: Island
  • ASIN: B00004YTY5
  • Other Editions: Audio CD  |  MP3 Download
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (50 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 477,920 in Music (See Top 100 in Music)

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1. Big exit
2. Good fortune
3. Place called home
4. One line
5. Beautiful feeling
6. Whores hustle and the hustlers whore
7. This mess we're in
8. You said something
9. Kamikaze
10. This is love
11. Horses in my dreams
12. We float
13. This wicked tongue

Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

The most incendiary female British performer to emerge in the 1990s, Polly Jean Harvey has fought against stereotyping every step of her career. Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea--her sixth album--is as powerful a record as any she's made. It strikes a masterful balance between her blues/folk roots, avant garde leanings and soaring pop sensibility. The abrasive and jagged guitars hark back to her fiery 1992 debut album Dry on the ballistic yet anthemic opener "Big Exit" while the dreamy and opulent closer "We Float" demonstrates how her song writing has matured. Elsewhere the clamour and emotional rush of a heady relationship--particularly on the Thom Yorke duet "The Mess We're In"--gives the album a ferocious clarity. The production skills of Mick Harvey (of Nick Cave's Bad Seeds) lends depth and assurance, but though PJ quotes from many influences--The Who, Patti Smith, Bob Dylan, even West Side Story--her own indomitable presence shines throughout. Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea showcases a singular talent at the peak of her powers. --Gavin Martin

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
27 of 28 people found the following review helpful
Pure Genius 14 Feb 2004
By A Customer
Format:Audio CD
First of all, the New York influence and Patti Smith comparison has been much overstated by now; PJ Harvey has repeatedly said that Smith has never musically inspired her and that the vocal likeness is coincidental. That out of the way, I must now heartily endorse Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea – a truly great rock album and one of my personal favourites of all time.

This LP marks a major musical progression for Ms. Harvey. Like her early albums, these songs are built around the three-piece band dynamic of guitar, drums and bass; but this time around she adds lush layers of melody and reverb by bringing subtle shades of keyboard, E-Bow, accordion and harpsichord into the mix. The resulting sound is rich, graceful, tuneful and quite unlike anything she’s done before.

Big Exit kicks off the album in glorious, psychedelic, hard-rocking style. It opens with a wall of bellowing loudspeaker vocals, clattering Led Zeppelin drums and staccato electric guitars before melting into a swooning chorus of “Baby baby ain’t it true/I’m immortal when I’m with you”. The second song Good Fortune is a joyous, romantic, violent Bonnie and Clyde fantasy in which she dreams of going on the run and living a dangerous gypsy existence with her lover. It soon becomes clear that she is celebrating a new type of romantic love and positive energy on this record. Having covered darker territory throughout her career, she enjoys playing with Beatlesque guitar pop and delicate orchestration on songs like A Place Called Home, One Line, This Mess We’re In and the ethereal closer We Float. These are soaring, poignant songs of hurt and hope. Beautiful Feeling and Horses in My Dreams are unplugged ballads of raw, stark beauty. In contrast, at least five songs (Big Exit, The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore, Kamikaze, This Is Love and bonus track This Wicked Tongue) are as tough, fierce and hard-rocking as anything off Dry or Rid of Me.

Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea won the Mercury Music Prize, two Grammy nominations, two BRIT nominations, appeared on numerous album-of-the-year polls and prompted Q magazine to vote PJ Harvey the greatest female rock star of all time. For all the critical praise, it met an unusual reaction from some longtime fans. Grumpy doom-and-gloom miserabilists who favoured her darker early work seemed to cynically begrudge Harvey her new-found happiness on this record, and indie snobs felt put out that their “dirty little secret” was now being enjoyed by a wider audience. This has happened to every great rock act who has dared to edge from underground cult worship to mainstream success, from Pixies and Sonic Youth to White Stripes or Queens of the Stone Age. She certainly hasn’t gone soft by any means. The fiery spirit, emotional intensity and musical passion are all still there; the heart beats stronger than ever before.

This magnificent album demands to be heard by as many people as possible.

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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful
By Klingy
Format:Audio CD
I'm too lazy to bother reviewing many albums here but I had to make an exception for this one. Why? Because it's one of the greatest rock albums I've ever heard and I want new people to know just how good PJ Harvey really is.

Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea is a masterpiece from start to finish. PJ outdoes herself on raw, fiery, hard-rocking guitar cuts like Big Exit, This Is Love, Kamikaze, The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore and the brilliant bonus track This Wicked Tongue. The spectacular opening song Big Exit speeds past on blazing, careening power chords and powerhouse drumming courtesy of master percussionist Rob Ellis. Good Fortune and One Line both have a dizzying romanticism and surging energy that make them similarly irresistible. And listen out for the quaking monster riff that opens This Is Love as PJ lustily declares, "I can't believe life's so complex when I just wanna sit here and watch you undress" - it manages to be an electrifying, deliciously sexy hard-rock song and witty, tongue-in-cheek fun at the same time. These songs see PJ Harvey revisiting the punky, bluesy power-trio days of her early albums Dry and Rid of Me, and they reveal her oft-cited influence of Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix and other classic 70s rock. It's not all bluster and noise though. Gorgeous songs like A Place Called Home, You Said Something, We Float and the heartbreaking Thom Yorke duet This Mess We're In will surprise you with their sparkling melodies and a cleaner production than previous PJ Harvey records. There are also two minimalist, stripped-down acoustic numbers - Beautiful Feeling and Horses in My Dreams - that bring a nicely eerie atmospheric touch to proceedings, nestled in amongst the louder tracks.

The whole album is brilliantly sequenced so that it feels like a loosely conceptual song cycle about a person arriving in a big scary city (Big Exit), finding an exciting but dangerous love (the Bonnie and Clyde references of Good Fortune), then enduring romantic heartache (This Mess We're In) and angry turmoil (Kamikaze) before fading out on a promise to "Take life as it comes" (in We Float). But a few minutes after We Float has reached its dreamy, hopeful end, the head-banging bonus track This Wicked Tongue unexpectedly charges in to bring the record to its bitter, explosive, hardcore finish.

PJ Harvey is a unique, genius-level talent and Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea shows her off at her peak: her voice is brilliantly expressive, her lyrics are unusually poetic, and her guitar playing has a ringing dynamic clarity. She simply has a rare brand of emotional intensity and pure passion that cannot be faked.

I strongly urge all you readers to buy this album now - you will NOT be disappointed!
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
By Phill
Format:Audio CD
The Mercury music prize winning album "Stories From The City,Stories From The Sea" is one of the best progressive rock albums since i can remember now i have to say my rock knowledge isn't the greatest but i know enough to know that this is a classic.PJ Harvey in the early 90's followed the footsteps of Marianne Faithfull & Patti Smith and brought the feminist image and told the world that women can do rock too!
It starts off with the rather up-beat jingley "Big Exit" probably about paranoia on some level it's one of my favourite PJ songs so far and she sings it with such raw passion.
"Good Fortune" which was one of the singles lifted from the album is one of the most commercial sounding songs of her career it's a good song although not as good as the rest "A Place Called Home" which is my favourite on the album it's such an enchanting song in a dark sorta way, her voice is very raspy on this one and thats one reason why i love it so, again a more commercial sound from her usual underground style.
"One Line" & Beautiful Feeling" are more mellower tracks the latter a nice chilled out love song which keeps at the same tempo all the way through as opposed to "One Line" where it picks up and gets quite hard but still keeping a still mellow vibe.
One of the highlights is the duet with Thom Yorke of Radiohead on "The Mess We're In" a utter masterpiece they both sound fantastic together i think PJ sounds really beautiful on this one.
"This Is Love" is a cool jumpy rock song reminds me of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs (PJ is probably one of Karen O's inspirations)
and enjoyable song the only song that dosnt grab me and i that i never really listen to is "Kamikaze" is has a rhythm and blues undertone which i was surprised at but even still a song i can't seem to like.
The 6 minute closer is a true highlight "We Float" could be well a truly be a masterpiece in it's own right a throughly enjoyed every minute of this one

Top 5
1.A Place Called Home
2.Big Exit
3.The Mess We're In
4.We Float
5.Beautiful Feeling

PJ is just like all of the great women of rock throughout the world shes an utter legend in her own right bringing back female rock that sorta disappeared for a while in the 80's (although some kept it alive Tina Turner,KD Lang...etc)and revived come 1992
"Stories From The City,Stories From The Sea" is in my top 25 rock albums where it damn well should be
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
PJ Harvey intimated in a recent magazine interview that this is the least favourite album that she has created and that she can't listen to it now. Read more
Published 13 months ago by Spider Monkey
The Best PJ Harvey Album!!!
In my opinion, this is my favourite PJ Harvey Album I have bought, since then I have gone on to buy some of her other albums, however I always come back to listening to this one, I... Read more
Published 14 months ago by Mr. Joel S. Greenhalgh
Some Very Good Songs But A Mixed Bag Overall
Typical that PJ's most praised album is also her least interesting. Very clearly a "New York" album much of it sounds like Patti Smith retreads - without any of the spark that... Read more
Published 16 months ago by L. C. Warne
A definate must
If you're new to PJ Harvey then this is the perfect albumn to start off with. Its the most accessable by far of all her albumns, which is not meant either as a praise nor as a... Read more
Published 21 months ago by razmataz13drums
New York Story
A dark and powerful rock and roll album. All the songs are written by PJ and are full of references to excesses of surrendering to big city life (and perhaps the rock lifestyle?). Read more
Published on 14 May 2010 by haunted
Stories From The City
This is a great collection of songs. Polly Harvey is a great singer and guitar player. All these tunes are good in their own way, but This Wicked Tongue is just magnificent. Read more
Published on 28 April 2010 by AJ Hallam
This is kind of about you. This is kind of about me
This is a cracking album - apparently PJ doesn't think too much of it herself these days - but what does she know? Read more
Published on 4 Feb 2010 by A. Willard
A powerhouse performance
A fabulous raw voice, backed up by great high quality musicians knocking out pure class. Get in the car, on the bike, wherever, and blast this out.
Published on 19 Dec 2009 by T. Ramage
An old school fan feels compelled...
I am a very very hard to please, very cynical person.

I am also a massive massive fan of Dry, Rid of Me, 4-track Demos, TBMYL and Is This Desire. Read more
Published on 20 Aug 2008 by BerkSonics
Is this PJ at her 'lightest'?
Before listening to this album, I had heard her other album, TO BRING YOU MY LOVE. That album was intensely dark, really quite disturbing in places. Read more
Published on 6 Sep 2007 by Brida
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