Straight out of England’s rural Southwest, Polly Jean Harvey all the time had a non secular reference to the American South – the birthplace of backwoods-gothic sin and redemption – and of the blues, which she found by her first musical hero, Howlin’ Wolf. With that lineage, it was no shock that the debut album by this younger Englishwoman was not like the rest that appeared in 1992. Nearly three a long time later, it’s no stretch to say that it’s nonetheless startling. Albums like Dry are so way-out-there that they don’t belong to a decade or scene.
The feral blues-rock underpinning Harvey’s volcanic presence on the file raises the hair on the again of your neck. Greater than that: listening to Dry‘s gnarled guitar/bass/drums attack is like being in the same room as something disquieting and eternal. Though Harvey’s sonic armory later included a little bit of goth, somewhat electronica, some plain previous rock, and one thing approaching pop, it was the blues that unlocked her storytelling talents.
The opposite outstanding factor is that regardless of being solely 22, PJ Harvey was already fully-formed as a singer and songwriter. This “guitar-toting succubus,” in Rolling Stone’s description, had an emotional spectrum that skewed towards drama, and he or she had no filter. However she wasn’t uncontrolled – as some modern reviewers speculated – she was simply conveying her fact, figuratively ripping away Band-Aids to indicate some wounds, whereas leaving others safely lined.
One 1992 rave evaluation – that didn’t fairly grasp her – contended that Dry was an “honest irrational outpouring.” (The reviewer additionally claimed she’d reinvented “post-rockist guitar.”) In reality, the album was solely irrational within the sense that human emotions are irrational. Sincere, although, it definitely was. Whereas Polly Jean later rebutted the idea that her songs had been autobiographical, Dry was undeniably influenced by her personal life.
She and her band (Rob Ellis, drums; Stephen Vaughan, bass) had moved from her house village of Corscombe, Dorset (inhabitants 445), to London in 1991, and it was a wrench. Whereas the transfer was musically productive – they signed to indie label Too Pure and had been championed by influential Radio 1 presenter John Peel – Harvey was deeply sad. Her first actual relationship had simply ended, she was renting a moist flat in North London, and town felt overwhelming.
Thus, the songs that ended up on Dry have a particular narrative arc. Over 11 tracks, the temper regularly shifts from heartbroken pleading to a thirst for revenge. Aptly, it kicks off with a discordant clang – that’s Harvey’s guitar, welcoming you to the opening “Oh My Lover.” Darkish and bass-heavy, it grimly provides her boyfriend permission to see one other girl whereas nonetheless concerned with Polly.
On “Dress” and “Sheela-Na-Gig” (the primary and second singles), Harvey first adopts a teenage whine, begging the man to have a look at her within the costume he purchased her; within the second track, she gives him her “childbearing hips…ruby-red ruby lips,” solely to be rebuffed by his brutal retort, “You exhibitionist…Wash your breasts, I don’t want to be unclean.”
All of this, together with the livid payback tracks “Joe” and “Hair,” is thrust alongside by Harvey’s caustic guitar-playing and the cavernous noise kicked up by drums and bass. Within the latter track she’s Delilah, chopping off Samson’s crowning glory as he screams, “Wait!” a picture that any wronged lover will relish.
Oh, and there are some first-class hook traces on Dry: the refrain of “Sheela-Na-Gig” particularly, is a roaring singalong that might have been made for competition crowds, and the delight of it, is that it’s about historical stone figures of ladies displaying their labia.
It’s straightforward to see why Courtney Love as soon as stated, “The one rock star that makes me know I’m sh_t is Polly Harvey.” Madonna, too, is a fan, and there are clear affinities with Björk, whose solo profession took off a yr after Dry; each ladies are restlessly inventive, and never certain to any template. Natasha Khan of Bat for Lashes was additionally impressed by Harvey’s “honest, real, quite intimate nakedness” whereas making her 2012 album, The Haunted Man.
If Dry nonetheless packs a punch virtually three a long time on, think about the way it sounded on the time. And picture how she appeared to an early 90s viewers. The entrance cowl is an excessive close-up of her bruised-looking lips and the again reveals her in stark monochrome, topless and watching the digicam equivocally. But she bridled at the concept that she and her music upended standard female mores: she simply was what she was. Dry is a surprising debut from an artist who greater than lived as much as her early promise.
Dry Demos might be purchased right here.
