Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea

My algorithm keeps trying to get me to listen to PJ Harvey, maybe because Thom Yorke is in this.
Meh, not for me at all. She's fine, but I'm bored. 2*
Highlights: the mess we're in

It wasn't bad but didn't click with me.

For whatever reason I can never seem to muster enough energy to properly engage with her music. All of my prior reviews for her albums have just been straight down the middle, "It's alright". Aaaand... It's kind of the same here. Yeah, it's alright. At least she's consistent. Some tracks are nicely done, but there's also a lot of dirgy stuff in there which I'm not into.

'I want a pistol / I want a gun / I'm scared baby / I wanna run'; 'Cause baby I'm just a scared and lonely rider / But I gotta know how it feels.' Polly, like Bruce, runs b/c she's scared and at the end of her rope. That feeling of a last-ditch effort pervades the entire record, simultaneously providing it w/ edge and flight, attitude and restraint. Despite the obvious comparisons to Patti Smith, Polly is a fresh and moving approach to the perennial tropes of popular music: love, sex, drugs, violence. Besides, if we're doing honest comps, this is Because-Of-The-Night-Patti (I know, more Springsteen, but that's where I'm at), not Radio Ethiopia or even Horses. Words like 'brave' or 'fearless' don't do this album justice: how 'bout 'destined,' 'staggering'?

This was really nice! Both rock-mamma-bear, ballads and Thom Yorke.

Generally very good

Oh thank goodness, absolute redemption from yesterday!
Here we go straight into one of the great albums of all time!
Every song is great with a lot of diversity and the track order works very well.
Such great songs and vocal performances!
This album is definitely one of my faves from her great catalogue.

i dont want to just hand out 5/5s but this is actually amazing

Solid

Haven’t listened to this in a while, forgot just how good it is. I mean it has 2 Thom Yorke features!

3.25

An okay alt-pop album. Reminiscent of Alanis Morrisette without the distinctive voice. Everything here is competent, but nothing here is truly great.

Not a dull moment to be found on this impeccably recorded, excellently presented, approachable yet artful piece of art. Incredibly impressive stuff that I will be relistening to as soon as possible.

This will be my third PJ Harvey record on this album journey, following her early 1990s output. I already heard the single "Good Fortune" last year and liked it. How does the rest of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea compare?

Simply put, this is a very exuberant alternative record, capturing the sort of joy and raw beauty that PJ must have felt towards the turn of the century. From the pursuit of love on "Good Fortune", to the positivity shown where she was at the time on "A Place Called Home", to outright confirming her sentiments on "Beautiful Feeling", her energy, complemented by the brighter textures in the guitar melodies and reverb, made this album come off very warm and pleasant to listen to.

While an argument can be made that Stories was her "mainstream" record, the album still retains darker undertones and experimentation to keep it above a typical commercial pop sound. Opening with PJ's own observations of gun obsession on "Big Exit", the rat race of bustling city life on "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore", the implied aggressive sexual act on "Kamikaze" while dealing with the emotional fallout on "This Is Love", all culminating in the sentiment on "We Float" where the bid is made to make the most out of what life has to offer before our souls move on to the afterlife. Along the way, there are some abrasive guitar riffs on tracks like "This is Love" and "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" to match the grittier tone, along with notable contributions from Thom Yorke of Radiohead on tracks like "This Mess We're In" and "Beautiful Feeling" to add dimensionality to those tracks from having the male counterpart for the relationship exploration she delves into. Even more sobering is the piano-led ballad "Horses in My Dreams", where PJ recalls some vivid imagery in her sleep that could be interpreted as her free spirit, unburdened and able to roam wherever she wanted to.

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was an impressive record. I know that PJ was already well-established as a singer-songwriter by this point, but even then, this album feels superbly ethereal in its sentiments of a moment of bliss, so frail and fleeting, yet it came when it needed to.

*Man listens to Sleater-Kinney once*

Man, this sounds like Sleater-Kinney. Mostly I joke, because I said the same with Elastica yesterday, but the guitar tone and style is giving me some SK vibes as well, just with some more standard late 90's/early 00's alt rock vibes. Similar to what I said about Aimee Mann's record, but some of this record could easily slot into an episode of Buffy.

But yeah, this is a great record. Not much specific to talk about it, but I'm liking it more than Let England Shake (which I gave a 4) because of the aforementioned SK-isms. Really cool Thom Yorke feature on This Mess We're In.

I liked it. Good voice and good vocal lines.

Critical darling of the 90's! Not sure why.

Bit boring

Naja

As well as introducing me to some new artists, this project has been a welcome reminder of how much I bloody love PJ Harvey. I’ve already given five stars to Dry and Let England Shake, and this isn’t going to break the streak. At the risk of sounding like her mum, it's nice to hear her sounding happy.