Album Review- PJ Harvey

 Every new PJ Harvey album is an event.

I anticipated that after the 1-2 punch of Dry and Rid of Me that her career would follow most every musical artist who comes on the scene with a burst of energy. That there was no way it could be topped and like almost everyone else, it would be diminishing returns

In 2000, her fifth album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea felt like a masterpiece. I have heard Harvey herself isn’t fond of it, but it feels like once the music press got it right- it was a top work of art.

23 years later, I no longer just consider Harvey a great artist. Like peers, Radiohead, Arcade Fire or the Killers, every album release is an event, but Harvey is on another level now.

Not only is it worth checking out any new material, you never quite know what direction she is heading. Like Nick Cave or Tom Waits, there’s a sense of constant reinvention. There are no “better” albums, just “different” albums.

While I didn’t rank 04’s Uh Huh Her and 07’s White Chalk so highly at the time, they have really held up.

I did indeed love 11s Let England Shake and 16s Hope Six Demolition Project. Closely related to Patti Smith and Nick Cave at their most raucous, the subsequently released Demos drew from all time great artists like Eddie Cochran and Niney the Observer

The new album I Inside The Old Year Dying is certainly a different beast. It is a very atmospheric album. Harvey has clearly made music like that before, but it’s been awhile.

I admit it didn’t grab me on first listen but I was never going to give up on Harvey that easily and it didn’t take too many spins to grab me. This ambient electronic style of Harvey’s seems to work best as (her work often does) as a singular piece of art and not a collection of singles.