ALBUM REVIEW
P.J. HARVEY
“Album Demo”
Island
* * *
Polly Jean Harvey “unplugged,” as she is on this album of solo demonstration recordings, is really Polly Jean Harvey unleashed.
Like Sinead O’Connor, she disregards the conventions that define acceptable routes of emotional expression, allowing feelings their full, furious release. That makes for moments that are both uncomfortably candid and profoundly rewarding--something we already experienced in her two albums with her former band.
What’s clear here, on the blueprint versions of songs mainly from “Rid of Me,” is that the emotional turbulence comes from deep in the genetic makeup of the songs, not from the bass and drums, whose dynamics merely reinforce the obvious.
New albums are rated on a scale of one star (poor) to four stars (excellent).
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