P.J. Harvey

Harvey's seventh album provides glimpses of the raw and brutal power that oozed out of her earliest records. Uh Huh Her doesn't explode, but it maintains an unflinching tension throughout, and her guitar work is as dirty and frantic as ever. Even the simple acoustic guitar on "The Desperate Kingdom Of Love" sounds bold.

"I can't believe that life's so complex/When I just want to sit here and watch you undress,"
Polly Jean Harvey sang a few years back on "This Is Love," the best song on the best album
of her career, Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea. After spending most of the
Nineties as a mysterious, cult-building heroine, she found something like happiness on
Stories. Now, after four years and a queen-size dose of bad love (or so it seems,... More >

A genius's depressions can be as dull as anybody else's, especially if she thinks passion precludes laughs ("It's You," "The Pocket Knife") (Grade - **)