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The Rice Thresher
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Dalton Tomlin Native Brit Polly Jean Harvey has gained a reputation as quite the hellcat in the alternative genre, mostly due to her scathing early work on Dry and Rid of Me. She tempered her act with the moody To Bring You My Love and dabbled in techno with Is This Desire?, still focusing on similar themes, albeit in a softer, less abrasive vein. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea goes back to the harder rock and signature guitar grumbling from her early days with lighter lyrics, as if Harvey's actually happy. The album is more or less based on the time she spent in New York City, apparently Harvey's kind of town. "Big Exit," ironically enough, is the first track, and a great one at that. Although it's not too representative of the rest of the album, it's a great throwback to '70s rockers like Iggy Pop and David Bowie. It also contains lyrics like "I want a pistol in my hand," probably symbolic of something. Many of the following tracks would fit right in with those on To Bring You My Love - dark, moody, slow, possibly somewhat monotonous. "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" is more upbeat and leads into "This Mess We're In," an intriguing and well-structured duet with Radiohead's Thom Yorke. "Kamikaze" is fast and furious - the angriest Harvey gets on the album. But she gets more introspective as she finishes with "Horses In My Dreams" and "We Float," a fitting ending to perhaps her most lucid and personal work yet. The one major drawback is that Stories doesn't quite have the energy of Dry and Rid of Me or the mood of To Bring You My Love - it sort of finds a common ground between the two, and that may be disappointing to fans. Still, Harvey seems to have gotten more mature, and while her music loses a little edge, it gains some smarts. - Dalton Tomlin
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