Like its studio predecessor Rid of Me, To Bring You My Love fades in slowly and deliberately, a menacing single-string guitar riff serving as the entr'acte to PJ Harvey's despondent growl, which is placed so up-front in the mix that it sounds distorted beyond repair. The funereal atmosphere of the first track, in which Harvey growls and then wails over the tribulations she has gone through in order to be with a lover, sets the tone for the tracks that follow, which marry the sublime and the profane in a way that she hadn't committed to record before. The breakout hit "Down By The Water" is a perfect example of the way Love explored and exploited those tensions; Harvey's voice is recorded in an achingly up-close way, her trembling alto describing an innocence lost while strings and electronics gradually encroach on it.

After the stripped-down harshness of Rid of Me, To Bring You My Love can be seen as something of a move toward lushness — the album was produced by Harvey, her ex-bandmate John Parish, and Mark "Flood" Ellis (the latter of whom had recently worked on Nine Inch Nails' The Downward Spiral and U2's Zooropa). But that… read more »