A review by The 941 and Tampa Calling blogger and Creative Loafing Sarasota editor Cooper Levy-Baker.
By the time she released her sixth solo album — Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea — Polly Jean Harvey had pretty much stretched her sound in every direction it could logically go.
1992’s Dry was her fully formed indie-encapsulating debut; 1993’s Rid of Me her Steve Albini-produced exploration of caterwauling noise; 4-Track Demos her raw, immediate bedroom snapshot; 1995’s To Bring You My Love her confident, theatrical blues masterstroke; 1998’s Is This Desire? her electronica-dabbling incorporation of folk-rock touches. What was left but to streamline her sound, spruce up the recording studio and record a steamy slab of hook-driven pop-rock?
Don’t take that as criticism. Quite the opposite. Recording Stories, Harvey seemed to realize something that eluded many of her alternative generation peers: Rawness, ugliness and aggression are all artistic crutches every bit as lazy and retrograde over time as a dedication to beauty, craft and high production values.
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2009.