Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

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.

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!

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