PJ HARVEY Vinyl & CDs

Review: I Inside the Old Year Dying is PJ Harvey's tenth studio long player but a first in some seven years. The last, The Hope Six Demolition Project, was a UK number one on the album charts and this one was again recorded with long-time creative collaborators John Parish and Flood. It is a vast sonic universe that is located "in a space between life's opposites, and between recent history and the ancient past." There is plenty of biblical imagery, Shakespearean references and lots of profound songwriting, as you would expect.

Review: We've been treated to reissues of everything else from PJ Harvey's spectacular catalogue, so it's only right we get a chance to savour the deeper cuts that shape out the persona of the high priestess of alternative rock. Gathering together an exhaustive 59 B sides, demos and previously unreleased tracks, this six-LP box set takes us into the heart of Polly Jean's writing process, showing the raw power in the songwriting when it's just her voice and an overdriven guitar, and showing us the broader possibilities of songs which didn't make the cut for the studio albums. This is a true treasure of music getting the authoritative release she deserves.

Review: 

The Hope Six Demolition Project was first put out in 2016 and gave rise to singles such as 'The Wheel', and 'The Community Of Hope'. This deluxe reissue comes on 180gsm black vinyl and has plenty of alt, art and folk-rock goodness within from perennial favourite Polly Jean "PJ" Harvey. This reissue of her sixth album features brand new artwork with cover art that is in fact based on a drawing PJ Harvey has done herself. It has been freshly mastered for the occasion by Jason Mitchell at Loud Mastering and was overseen by frequent and ling time PJ-producer, John Parish.

Review: PJ Harvey's ongoing vinyl reissue series has finally arrived at 2007's White Chalk, an album that at the time was thought of as something of a curveball from the West Country singer-songwriter. Unlike its predecessors, which were celebrated for their raw, fuzzy, stripped-back alt-rock sound, White Chalk emerged after Harvey decided to write an album of "piano songs" - despite having no experience playing the instrument herself. With Flood and John Parish handling production duties, the set's tracks were generally lighter and breezier sonically, with a little more polish and much more restricted use of electric guitar. Harvey's lyrics are as distinctive as ever, though, offering a clear contrast to the pastoral and oddly traditional feel of the music.

Review: You can never really understate the impact Polly Jean Harvey had when she landed on the UK music scene, and the radars of tastemakers like John Peel, in the early-1990s. Guitar tracks at the time were usually split into unashamedly lager-soaked upfront Britpop, or nihilistic and self-sabotaging grunge and metal from the US. PJ Harvey was neither, and on 'To Bring You My Love' she perfected a particularly UK take on heavy, darkroom rock.

Pressing play means stepping into a world where the blues can either be a sparse, pitch black tome ('To Bring You My Love') or stomping and sweat-soaked juggernaut ('Meet Ze Monsta'), and that's just referencing the first two songs. Compare either to the trip-hop infused downtempo melancholia of 'The Dancer', and it's pretty clear why this was one of the albums of its decade.

Review: While it had only been a few months since the release of her 4 Track Demos project, when To Bring You My Love first arrived in 1994 it felt like it had been a long time coming. Taking elements that made her early studio efforts stand out - the twisted mania of Dry and the Patti Smith-esque agony of Rid of Me - here Polly Jean Harvey fully embraced a kind of pained grunge-blues.

The resulting brew is particularly potent. Whether you're listening to the hushed, mysterious groove of 'Working For The Man', 'Long Snake Moan''s dark metal edges, or the sparse, troubled and deeply pained anthem 'Teclo', everything here is clearly the work of a genius. A fact that rings particularly true given these stunning versions represent her work in its original demo form.

Review: The world was very different in 1992, but some of the greatest musical moments from that year stand the test of time. Just take Polly Jean Harvey's staggering debut - the making of a musical icon and one of the era's finest examples of songwriting. It still sounds exceptional and its messages still resonate, lifting the woke-washed veil of our age in one fell swoop, laying bare the fact that many toxic attitudes prevail. It's rock music, but that's hardly the point. What matters isn't so much what's being played, but how and what's being said. Delivered with an air of Pixies and nod to Patti Smith, written in the wake of a relationship imploding, our introduction to Harvey remains vital as ever. A refusal to accept simplistic, patriarchal views of womanhood and femininity, or indeed simplistic patriarchal views of anything, the record's razor sharp observations, cunning wit and deft ability to reference but feel original is remarkable.