P.J. Harvey

I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline," Howlin' Wolf once complained – now
along come Polly Jean Harvey and Liz Phair bearing matches. "Douse hair with gasoline/Set
it light and set it free," Harvey rhapsodizes on "Man-Size," from her second album, Rid of
Me. "I clean the house/I put all your books in an order/Send it up on fire/Death before
dawn," Phair sings on "Canary," one of eighteen tracks on her double-albumlengt... More >

Never mind sexual--if snatches like "Make me gag," "Lick my injuries," and "Rub 'til it bleeds" aren't genital per se, I'm a dirty old man. And if the cold raw meat of her guitar isn't yowling for phallic equality, I'm Robert Bly, which is probably the same thing. She wants that cock--a specific one, it would seem, attached to a full-fledged, nonobjectified male human being, or maybe an array or succession of cocks, it's hard to tell. But when she gets pissed off, which given the habits of male human beings happens all the time, she thinks it would be simpler just to posit or grow or strap on or cut off a cock of her own. After which it's bend-over-Casanova and every man for him or herself. (Grade - A)