P.J. Harvey, Dry
Featured Album
Planting PJ Harvey's flag as a musical force to be reckoned with
Eighteen years on, the debut album from PJ Harvey still sounds fairly astonishing because of its sheer rawness; it opens with a dissonant guitar chord and Harvey wailing "Oh, my lover," and somehow manages to get more raw from there, tying up notions of femininity and sexuality and what, exactly a "woman in rock" should present herself as in a messy, but utterly arresting package. "Sheela-Na-Gig," in which Harvey wrestles with the notion of female sexuality's worth and worthlessness over her band's frenzied playing, probably encapsulates the album's overall mood the best; it was also the lone Stateside "hit" from Dry (it garnered some play from alt-rock stations in the halcyon days before that format's hostile takeover by wounded males). The propulsive "Dress" and the barreling "Joe" both cloak their longing for companionship in furious inversions of the rock formula, while the minimalist "Plants and Rags" ratchets up its feelings of insanity and desperation with a cello part that veers from placid accompaniment to a manic solo that sounds as if it's being played as part of a life-or-death bet. Dry planted PJ Harvey's flag as a musical force to be reckoned with; that it only served as a precursor to Harvey's later reinventions instead of yet another promising debut that went nowhere is a testament to both her artistic reinvention and her inherent mettle.
