release date: Sep. 29, 1998
format: cd
[album rate: 4 / 5] [3,92]
producer: Flood, Polly Jean Harvey and Head
label: Island Records - nationality: England, UK
Track highlights: 1. "Angelene" (4 / 5) - 2. "The Sky Lit Up" (live) - 3. "The Wind" (live on Later) - 4. "My Beautiful Leah" - 5. "A Perfect Day Elise" - 8. "The Garden" (4 / 5) - 12. "Is This Desire?" (4 / 5)
4th studio album by PJ Harvey released on Island Records and produced by by Flood [Mark Ellis], Head [Howard Bullivant], and PJ Harvey. This was the first album I bought with PJ Harvey, although, not the first I listened to. At the time I found it interesting, yet not as good as I think of it nowadays. My knowledge of her music was limited but I really enjoyed her first albums better, so I soon purchased Rid of Me and Dry (1992). It's clear that she has come a way since her blasting and raw first releases, and that's also what makes this a really fine album. I think, that it combines her previous and somewhat overrated [!] but (still) critically acclaimed album To Bring You My Love (1995) and the debut Dry, but also brings her music into a new phase of alt. rock singer / songwriter music with inspiration from trip-hop ("The Wind") and electronic ("No Girl So Sweet") without actually attributing those styles to the album as such. Thanks to the producer panel with different approaches and her studio musicians, she threads new territory with more complex music that really comes into place on the following album. A track like "The Garden" is stylistically as taken from her brilliant 2000 release Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea.
[ allmusic.com 3 / 5, Q Magazine, Rolling Stone 4 / 5 stars ]
