PJ Harvey - "Rid Of Me" Commentary

A note on nomenclature: I remember reading in Spin magazine that "PJ Harvey" refers to the band of which Polly Jean Harvey is the lead vocalist. Contemporarily, I hear and see the two names used interchangeably, but I think it's artistically very incorrect to dismiss the artists with whom Polly Jean surrounds herself as a songwriter. That is to say: "Rid Of Me" does not sound like a singer-songwriter album. It sounds like a rock band album. So I will continue to differentiate: when I say "PJ Harvey" I mean the band. Otherwise, I mean the woman herself.

With my musical heart left well behind in the mid 90s, "Rid Of Me" looms larger than life. This has always been an intimidating record to me. Today, listening to it reminded me of the paradox of healing: we must face that which hurts us if we are ever to heal from it. To be fair, there are parts of this album that are seriously not comfortable to listen to. It's very dynamic: the loud parts are loud, and the quiet parts are very quiet. It's as if the band means to draw our ears close to the speaker just to blow our eardrums out. That's what happened to me the very first time I listened to this album: I put the cassette in, but I could hardly hear the first song, so I turned it up. Next thing I know, some woman is screaming, "Don't you wish you never met her?!" and my parents are yelling at me to turn down the racket. Ever since then I've struggled to come to terms with the fierce emotion the band glorifies in this music.

The reason "Rid Of Me" is so challenging is that it yields deep rewards. Much as healing often leaves us scarred but wiser, this album leaves me feeling grounded, sane and refreshed. I am much better for having faced the stranger, darker parts of myself that this record brings up. "Rub Till It Bleeds" is a perfect example. Noticeably the longest song on the album, it starts off sounding JUST like something Liz Phair could also have released in 1993. When the bass kicks in, though, we know we're in for a little something extra here. Polly Harvey has fucking SOUL, and she's punctuated by a drum performance so full of brass it could be a whole marching band. This song features that brass just as strongly as it features Harvey's unstoppable voice. If "Dry" (the album) was Harvey's invocation of ancient female energy, "Rid Of Me" (the album) is her demonstration that she has her finger on the source of that energy - these songs are a bold redefinition of femininity very true to the heart of third-wave feminism.

A very interesting feature of "Rid Of Me" is its construction as an album. In the fashion of many great pieces of music designed to be played on vinyl, "Rid of Me" has two distinct sides. From the title track opener to a nearly-unrecognizable"Highway '61 Revisited", the band plays thoughtful, midtempo rock built on alternating clean and pleasantly distorted guitars. The second side, from "50 Ft Queenie" to "Ecstasy" shows off a faster, more punk-influenced side of the band. Polly sounds somewhat more desperate and less sure of herself than on the first side, which lends to the seriously underground sound of the second half of this album. It's apt to note the similarity to the 2nd half of Nirvana's masterpiece, "In Utero", which was the next album Steve Albini produced after "Rid Of Me". Also similarly to "In Utero", the second half of "Rid Of Me" is a proper goldmine for repeated listening. Albini's raw, minimalist production really lets the songs speak for themselves here, and that gives this album a timeless quality.

The 2nd half of "Rid Of Me" has 2 songs that shine as amazing deep cuts. "Yuri-G" is a full-on imaginative romp. The bass is almost too low in pitch for me to hear, but I can certainly FEEL it. At the same time, Harvey's voice is tripled, maybe quadrupled over itself, showcasing a lot of her vocal prowess at once, which is a real treat. "Dry" may be the best song on the whole album, but it also may be one of the most bitter songs I've ever heard. Its chorus stretched out agonizingly slow, "Dry" is almost a parody of pop music, but it harbors a hauntingly memorable melody, and makes very clear the vulnerability and sincerity of Polly Harvey's songwriting. The album ends with an extended slide guitar solo, which is about as blues-influenced as one can get, and this solo is one of the big payoffs of this album. It's honest, refreshing and makes any preceding discomfort quite worthwhile.

"Rid Of Me" deserves every accolade its every gotten, and probably every criticism. It's fearless, it's engaging and it's interesting. It's worth revisiting over time as we expose ourselves to new music. It's very possible that "Rid Of Me" is an acquired taste, but it's well worth it.

PJ Harvey - "Dry" Commentary

I started my PJ Harvey retrospective today by listening to "Dry," which I'd not heard straight through in a long time. I only mildly appreciated this record when it first came out, but today I HEARD it like it was the first time. This album is like my shower loofah: a little abrasive & a little grimy, but it feels really good & leaves me shinier.

For a 1992 independent release, this record is paradoxically both kind of dated and ahead of its time. There were a lot of women rock artists experimenting with vocal styles in 1992, but (with the notable exception of Bjork) none of them showed the stylistic range of a hungry, blues-soaked Polly Harvey. The band evokes the Pixies with some loud-quiet-loud dynamic, and with the drums sounding raw and big, that dynamic may be the most uncomfortable part of the album - Harvey's voice pretty much demands we listen. The guitars often sound like they're barely in tune, but as much as that is a feature of the height of the Nirvana era, Harvey's voice always balances any atonality. Pretty powerful weapon, that voice.

"Sheela-Na-Gig" is the centerpiece of the album. This song would fit comfortably into the catalog of either the Pixies or Nirvana, but that is not to say it's derivative - that's to put PJ Harvey in the same company with those two bands. What sets this band apart from those two worthy contemporaries, though, is a seriously women-centric point of view.  "Sheela-Na-Gig" scared me a lot as a man when I first heard it. Now I hear it much more as an invocation of timeless feminine energy, and appreciate Harvey's use of such ancient images in such powerful rock music.

This album is almost 20 years old, but I think its energy, bluesy power and dynamic vocal performance all help it to escape the early 90s to live on as a classic independent rock album. Especially as a debut, this record showcases a songwriter and a band poised on the brink of a really wide-ranging musical journey, and is a great listen.