PJ Harvey rocks. And I don’t say this lightly, because this is a musician who truly embodies the spirit of rock as rock should be. She possesses the type of rare combination of brilliant songwriting and composition that comes together perfectly. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, by far her most commercially and critically successful record, is a modern masterpiece, having rightfully earned its place as one of Rolling Stone's 50 essential “Women of Rock” albums.
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea kicks off with the anthemic “Big Exit.” Its guitar-driven, heavy drum-infused intro leads to an affirmatively strong voice singing:
Look out ahead
I see danger come
I want a pistol
I want a gun
I'm scared baby
I want to run
This world's crazy
Give me the gun
Smoothly driving us into a chorus so rocking with vibrant energy, your toes tingle:
Baby, baby
Ain’t it true
I’m immortal
When I’m with you
You can hear the undeniable power in her voice in “Big Exit” where she gives it her all; the song is like a calling, as if she’s leading a revolution.
“Good Fortune,” the album’s pop highlight, is not as epic, but an easily infectious song that radiates with positive energy: “And I feel like some bird of paradise/My bad fortune slipping away.” It is pop-punk at its best; while “One Line” is a sweetly innocent soft track: “Do you remember the first kiss/Star shooting across the sky.” But the album’s sexiest song by far is “This is Love," a mixture of grungy guitars, drums, and uninhibited freedom of expression:
I can't believe that life's so complex
When I just want to sit here and watch you undress
I can't believe that life's so complex
When I just want to sit here and watch you undress
The 12- track album closes with the appropriately life-affirming “We Float,” where the chorus does a good job of summing up Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea: “But now we float/Take life as it comes.”
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is a departure from her past work in terms of tone; whereas previous albums exhibited dark and brooding noises and lyrics, Stories is energetically enthusiastic and positive, emitting a type of can-do attitude that just plain rocks. It is still very heavily driven by loud, grungy guitars and drums but the sound is a mixture of pop, punk, and rock in the best of ways. Always aiming to do different work, this album is what Harvey herself has entitled her “pop album” or “pop according to PJ Harvey,” which is really not pop as we know it, but a combination of everything. Call it what you will; this is music as intended.
"Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea" is on sale October 1, 2000 from Island.
