PJ Harvey’s
debut was pretty accomplished but little can prepare you for the gloriously
angry howl of its follow up, released in 1993. Even the cover is
visceral, to say the least. Steve Albini was enlisted to create a heavier
sound, and succeeded in spades. The quiet-quiet LOUD thing had yet to
become a cliché and several tracks here follow this format. The title track
features Harvey's whispered, barely there vocals for two and a half minutes
before she roars "don't you wish you'd never, never met her!" with
pounding drums and Harvey lashing out the guitar riffs. The track
finishes with a demented sounding Harvey screech-singing "LICK MY LEGS I'M
ON FIRE, LICK MY LEGS OF DESIRE!" And that's just the opening track.
Missed cranks
slowly into gear, leading to a menacing chorus of "I’ve missed him"
over bone-shaking, sledgehammer heavy guitar. A tortured howl introduces
Legs, dirty, for want of a better word, grungy guitar powers the song along
before a metaphorically-bloodied Harvey wails "did you ever wish me
dead... but I could kill you instead". Don't cross her! It's
followed by the viscerally titled Rub It Til It Bleeds, which lurches savagely
back and forth between quieter verses and heavy as fuck choruses with
smashed drums.
Mansize
Sextet parks guitar and drums for sinister, stabbing violin as PJ Harvey moans "got
my leather boots on", while there's a relatively ‘normal’ version later
on the album with the violins replaced by snarling guitars.
There’s no
let up on the album, she rips through a practically metal (or mental) version
of Bob Dylan's Highway 61' Revisited, and the breathlessly rocking Yuri G. It culminates in the 95 seconds of
pure bile of the penultimate track Snake, before finishing on the lurching
Ecstasy.
An
extraordinary piece of work, there’s nothing else like it in PJ Harvey’s
discography.
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