Review:
“With all of those men constantly whining about how their baby done them wrong, it's easy to forget that at its inception, the blues was also a great feminist art form. Pioneering women such as Bessie Smith, Dinah Washington, Lucille Bogan and Julia Lee sang with raw, unfettered anger and lustful energy about the frustrations and joys of their relationships. And no artist in the rock era has reconnected with those roots as effectively as the diminutive but undeniable English enigma known as PJ Harvey.” JD
“With To Bring You My Love, the strain of deep blues that had been running through Harvey’s recordings from the beginning came to the forefront.” JD “Following the tour for Rid of Me, [she] parted ways with [drummer] Robert Ellis and [bassist] Stephen Vaughn, leaving her free to expand her music from the bluesy punk that dominated [the] first two albums. It also left her free to experiment with her style of songwriting. Where Dry and Rid of Me seemed brutally honest, To Bring You My Love feels theatrical, with each song representing a grand gesture.” STE
“Relying heavily on religious metaphors and imagery borrowed from the blues, Harvey has written a set of songs that are lyrically reminiscent of Nick Cave’s and Tom Waits’ literary excursions into the gothic American heartland. Since she was a product of post-punk, she’s nowhere near as literally bluesy as Cave or Waits, preferring to embellish her songs with shards of avant guitar, eerie keyboards, and a dense, detailed production” STE “by Harvey, Flood, and John Parish [which] makes these growths evident.” STE
The result is that To Bring You My Love is “a far cry from the primitive guitars of her first two albums,” STE which means it “lacks the indelible force of its predecessors,” STE but it is “her most accessible album” STE and “Harvey pulls it off with style, since her songwriting is tighter and more melodic than before.” STE
“The dynamics span from a quiet, middle-of-the-night whisper to a frightening, full-throttle roar, and the album’s 10 songs ooze out of the speakers over slow, grinding rhythms and expansive washes of fuzz guitar and droning organ. But the focus is always on that mysterious voice.” JD “With her hoarse rasp and occasional Patti Smith-like screech, Harvey isn’t a technically great singer, but her phrasing and dramatic delivery make the already haunting and poetic lyrics even stronger.” JD
Even as Harvey “contemplates the heinous crime of infanticide” JD on “the menacing Down by the Water,” STE she does so with “genuine hooks.” STE There’s also “the stately C’mon Billy” STE in which Harvey “confronts the absentee father of her imagined son.” JD
The “wailing” STE “Long Snake Moan is a minimalist sketch of wanton desire worthy of Howlin’ Wolf” JD while the “psycho stomp” STE of “Meet Ze Monsta accurately likens Harvey’s feminine rage to a destructive force of nature. (‘Hell ain't half full/Take me with you/Big black monsoon/Take me with you’).” JD
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