Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea

PJ Harvey is yet another in a too-long list of outstanding musical artists who I somehow just simply missed altogether when they were definitely available to me as a listener and concert-goer. I remember hearing her name a lot, and she was spoken very very highly of by a number of people whose musical tastes were similar to mine. Anyway, even though I can't quite explain how I didn't listen to her 21 years ago when this album was released, I can say after having listened to it that I think it's fantastic work. Compelling, intriguing, very interesting chord progressions and rhythms, and I just dig the overall vibe. Dark without being too self-referential or too harsh. Really solid album.

It starts off innocently, a couple of fairly standard rocky numbers, which had me worrying about lack of diversity. Then we hit the numbers she did with Thom Yorke, which sandwich the genius of "The Whores Hustle..." Now we start hearing the Nick Cave influence. There is light, shade, darkness. She uses that voice to stab you in the heart. When it's over, you feel bereft. Thank God for replay. I knew she was good, but this is the best album I've heard in years.

Enjoyed this one. PJ’s seemingly odd and occultist personality really comes through in her own perception of love.

Her most accessible album, and quite possibly her masterpiece (it's either this or Rid Of Me). It's as close as mainstream America finally got to embracing Generation X's Joni Mitchell. It might be due to the fact that Polly Jean sounds happy and playful, at least compared to her earlier work. Polly Jean Harvey deserves to have as many albums on this list as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. And this one's my favorite.

An exquisite album from an extraordinary artist at the top of her game, PJ Harvey’s song writing and playing hits another level. Beautiful, melodic love songs that rock hard.

Substantive and coherent. Thoughtful and driving. No real huge hits but a certain timelessness -- professionally executed at a very high level. Holds up and will continue to. Thom Yorke's guest appearance tells you all you need to know about the overall quality and band's position at the time.

This is the first artist that I've heard of - This is a solid album and PJ Harvey gets high marks for being influential, but it's not quite a 5 star album for me. Some obvious influences are Patti Smith on "Good Fortune" and Neil Young's Cinnamon Girl on the opening of "This is Love". There's also a great collaboration with Thom Yorke of Radiohead.

Strong female vocals with driving guitars and a punk sensibility. I really like this! Favorite Tracks: Big Exit, A Place Called Home, One Line, Beautiful Feeling, The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore, We Float. Least Favorite Tracks: Horses In My Dreams

In which critic’s darling Polly Jean evokes rather than describes new love darkened by a generalised dread that, if you want to take things too far, kind of adumbrates 9/11 the following year. Twenty years on, it’s a useful reminder of two truths. One, love always wins the day. Two, the West had been demonstrating its skills in geopolitical goat-fuckery for decades, and 9/11 wasn’t the bolt from the blue many like to pretend. Anyway, the album. Again and again, Harvey throws a rope around her unwieldy themes: “I’m immortal when I’m with you, but I want a pistol in my hand”; “Does it have to be a world full of dread? I want to chase you round the table and touch your head”; “I can’t believe the axis turns on suffering when you taste so good”; “This world all gone to war. All I need is you tonight.”; “I draw a line from your heart to mine. A line to keep us safe.” Her themes are distilled to bold and beautiful physical gestures, but they wouldn’t carry half as much heft without the sonics that are the album’s greatest achievement. It’s a sound you feel could sweep across an ocean. That’s no coincidence, as there are more than a few references here to Polly’s separation from her man. If I’m reading it right, he’s in London and she’s in New York (omg, omg, omg: 9/11). The surprisingly sparse arrangements match the economy of her writing, averaging (yep, I’ve done the sum) 4.3 instruments per track. Only the blissful ‘We Float’ gets a big-finish 12! Shit, Polly, quit flexin’. As always, it’s not about how much is there, it’s about what it does. And the standard guitar-bass-drums—sprinkled with harmonium, harpsichord, tambourine, maracas, electric piano, E. bow, bells, and djembe—are deeper than a full orchestra because you can feel the spaces between them. At the dawn of a century (oh god, what am I doing?) defined for many by the alienating effects of globalisation, evoking ’the spaces between’ is pretty damn clairvoyant. And so I thank Polly for reminding me of the lines you can draw across those spaces, from one heart to another. [Vomits]

It's a good album, but not a great one. A lot of the songs sound very similar to one another. Where they vary, the album is a lot more exciting (This is Love, This Mess We're In, Kamikaze). Dry and Rid of Me are far more interesting records.

5/5, this album was fantastic, I was torn between 4/5 for a while but the last couple tracks swayed me. The album does it all and does it well, most tracks felt unique and well produced, the antepenultimate taking you high, followed by the horses taking you low was cool, but coupled with the ‘light at the end of the tunnel’ resolution to end the album, truly impressed me. This is a prime example of the necessity of this website

PJ showing the world she can climb the charts keeping her alternative integrity perfectly untouched. Monumental.

The undisputed queen of indie rock pulls out her masterpiece!

Pulsating alternative rock. Even without Thom Yorke's cameos there are shades of Radiohead there. PJ Harvey certainly does concept albums well, these songs are indicative of New York

Unreal, very Patti smith

You know, I didn't hate this album. I didn't love it either. It was just ... okay. I enjoyed listening to it in the background as I got stuff done. There aren't really any standout tracks and, on a whole, the album felt like a bit of a jumbled mess. Maybe it's my lack of connection to the material. The wiki says that this was a bit of a love letter to New York. That city doesn't need a love letter. It needs a tetanus shot and a month in rehab. But it wasn't bad by any stretch of the imagination. It really wasn't. Perfectly adequate. Extremely middling.

Overall: 9/10 PJ Harvey is just in a world of her own. Her songs are simultaneously cool, fun and beautiful. I've actually listened to most of her discography since I got Dry in this list a while ago and I love that even though they all sound like her, they also sound very different from each other. This is one of her best and the vibes are immaculate. Fav Song: Horses in My Dreams Least Fav Song: This is Love

Beste plaat van PJ. Zo vaak gedraaid al en blijft elke keer prachtig.

8/10 Was not familiar with her game. But I really enjoyed this piece and will be returning again.

What a great album, the rock the softness in parts, surprise Thom Yorke, I really had a fun time and will be back again.

This was my second PJ Harvey album to listen to on this list, the first, being 'Rid of Me.' I enjoyed this album, albeit not as much as I enjoyed 'Rid of Me.' I thought the vocals here were fantastic, as were the guitars and drums. The songs featuring Thom Yorke were really great too. "Big Exit" and "You Said Something" were my favorite tracks here.

Альбом, уже ставший классикой и обязательным для прослушивания любому любителю рока. Для себя отмечу песни с Томом Йорком из Radiohead. 7 баллов из 10.

Really enjoyed this. More rocky and less experimental than I expected. Such a powerful voice. A few real banging tracks. Liked the Thom Yorke cameos

Great storytelling sick guitar. Loved the little piano/organ situation on a track I can't remember the name of and can always get around a Thom Yorke feature. Kamikaze is my highlight.

Favorite Song(s): This is Love, This Mess We're In This sounds like something my dad would play when I was a kid (in a good way). Weirdly very soothing to me. In addition, her voice sounds a bit like Lana del Rey.

This album sounds so 90s to me. At least it did when it started. As it got closer to the end I was like oh shit, this is where Patti Smith's influence had taken us in the early 2000's. As I was thinking how much she sounded like Patti on the song "This is Love," the very next track was called, "HORSES in My Dreams." Coincidence?! Probably, but damn she was serving my Patti on a few of those songs. Vocally at least. I didn't feel the feverish raw energy that Patti brought me and the songs kind of sounded like the epitome of late 90s/early 2000s alternative. I'm sure at the time it was a head turning sound, plus we were visited by everyones favorite alien, Thom Yorke, on "This Mess We're In," so I'm not going to come down on it too hard.

Sparse, very 2000s. I like Thom Yorke's appearance. I also like this record a ton more than "Let England Shake". A little bit more rock foward, with some slow spots here and there. Favorite tracks: "Big Exit", "One Line", "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore"

I still don't get why she's on here at all let alone multiple times.

Lol

As well as introducing me to some new artists, this project has been a welcome reminder of how much I bloody love PJ Harvey. I’ve already given five stars to Dry and Let England Shake, and this isn’t going to break the streak. At the risk of sounding like her mum, it's nice to hear her sounding happy.

I really enjoyed this album. One of my favorites from this this.

I spent the early 00's constantly reading spin telling me to listen to PJ Harvey and I never did. That was my bad. Great record.

Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea I listened to this a lot when it came out, mainly on the strength of This Mess We’re In, which I loved. It really reminds me of coming home from Japan for Christmas in 2000. I haven’t listened to it in a long time, so I’m glad it came up. Big Exit, is a cracking start, great lyrics, kind of punkish and new wave but accessible. Good Fortune is similar, a bit less aggressive perhaps, but a great song with a great hook and an evocative lyric. A Place Called Home is excellent too, from relatively simple instrumentation and arrangements she manages to make very engaging and interesting songs. One Line has a kinship with those first 3 songs, but again is great, with a vaguely unsettling atmosphere. Beautiful Feeling is fantastic, has a very folky feel, like the Unthanks, with those great backing vocals from Thome Yorke. Superb song. The Whores Hustle and the Hustler’s Whore is the kind of spiritual centre of the album, a great melody with an undeniable edge and a searching, impressionistic lyric sketching loneliness and isolation in a big city. This Mess We’re In, still great, a lovely melody with a sad and resigned feeling and two great vocals from them both. You Said Something is another great melody and hook - again the strummed guitar and minimal instrumentation conjures up an atmospheric and intriguing song. Kamikaze has that aggressive punky edge to it, and nice unhinged-ness suiting the title and coming after two pretty pop melodies This is Love I really remember from when it came out, love the swooping riff and that great tinkly piano. Another great melody and lyric too. Horses in my Dream, feel like the title is nod to Patti Smith, who she obviously shares a commonality with, but it’s a great and haunting low tempo ballad, with an edgy folkiness to it. Her voice sounds great on this one too. We Float is great too, a sense of ending and coming to terms with the end of a relationship, with that hazy drifting chorus with that superb melody. Hidden tracks were such a CD thing, and This Wicked Tongue is a good aggressive and angry song, but feels kind of unnecessary now. Doesn’t detract from the quality of the album at all though. This has reminded me what a great album this is, kind of amazing how engaging and interesting each song is, despite it in the main being relatively simple drums, strummed guitars and bass with minor additional instrumentation (although from my limited understanding there are some interesting chords happening). Like Let England Shake, I can see how she might not be everyone’s cup of tea, and how if you don’t buy into her style you probably wonder what all the fuss is about, but I think she’s fantastic and like Let England Shake this is an easy 5. 📖🌃📖🌊📖 Playlist submission: Still love This Mess We’re In, but I’ll go Beautiful Feeling

My 1001th album, and it’s a cracker, probably my favourite PJ Harvey album, very accessible but also brilliant. Love Thom York appearance on this too.

I was unaware of this terrific album. In my defense, we had two kids under three at the time.

The best album ever made.

Brilliant album

YEAH!! Love PJ love this record! Easy 5/5 for me on this one!

Wow this is fantastic. I knew a few of the songs already but it’s really incredible as a whole. The standouts for me are the songs with Thom.

Two PJ records in one week! I dithered over giving a 5 star rating to Rid Of Me, because I love it but it’s simply not as flawless as this. So I’m essentially saying this would get a 5 plus, if such a thing existed. Every song is great; the beautiful softer moments just as much as the powerful rock tracks. The opening bars make me feel as excited now as they did when I first heard it age 13. Still looking for a karaoke place where I can belt out Good Fortune.

PJ Harvey was not fucking around when she put this album together. A lot of fantastic songs. Excellent stuff! Fave track - the duet with Thom Yorke was great an all, but I have to go with "Good Fortune" overall, but like three quarters of the other tracks come in a close second place!

I love PJ Harvey, and I love this album. One of her best. 5 stars.

Great album, great songwriter. She’s influential as hell, there’s not much more I can say about her

This Mess We're In - awesome Kamikaze - rock & roll The Wicked Tounge - Hidden track but on another spotify session album good stuff

I’m ashamed I hadn’t heard this earlier. What a marvelous album.

I love this album!

AMAZING album that I was unaware was a thing. Added it to my list of go-to albums and could listen to this on repeat with no issues.

Very tempted to give this a 5. This is a New York album — maybe the single quintessential New York album — the way, like, After Hours or Do the Right Thing are New York movies. It also feels like such a landmark turn-of-the-century record (and was, fittingly, released Jan. 1, 2000). This and its predecessor, Is This Desire, probably represent the PJ Harvey sound I best connect to, a midpoint between the earlier grunge sound and the art rock tendencies that later took over her work. Fantastic opening run of tracks, but it's the closing songs that are the true all-timers here. There's Horses In My Dreams, in conversation with Belle & Sebastian's similarly themed closer to If You're Feeling Sinister, and also evocative of Michael Clayton. And then We Float stands as a career high, with such a massive, life-affirming chorus. What a beautiful album!

This was a surprise. I went into it only really knowing PJ Harvey from "Down By The Water," and came out wondering how this album flew under my radar for so long. Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea is a confident, well-crafted album; it's equal parts gritty and melodic, with a great balance of energy and emotion. It feels like one of those records that grows even more rewarding with each listen.

Absolutely deserving of the Mercury Prize. PJ Harvey’s songwriting is haunting and even Thom Yorke blesses us with his presence. I wonder if she might have released another Mercury Prize winning album precisely a decade later, that we could enjoy later into the journey of this list? Let’s hope.

<3

I'm sorry but this was just boring to me. A three for not being bad, but not being good either.

I feel compelled to listen to this again in the near future while at the same time not thinking it is spectacular.

This album is the most mid album I have gotten so far

Not bad, again not my cup of tea but not too bad.

Enchanting in its melancholy. This one is a callback to early 2000 with their uncertainty and dread. Tom York’s cameo was a surprise but a welcome one.

She’s overrated

I really want to be a PJ Harvey guy, but I'm just not a PJ Harvey guy. A couple of tracks stood out on this to me, but the combo of her vocals + the music just doesn't work for me. I'd do 2.5 stars if I could, but by sticking to my rounding down policy I feel like I'm betraying the music fan I wish I was.

POV: Your friend is driving you around in his mom’s car because his is in the shop. You don’t want to listen to the radio so you decide to rifle through her CD booklet. You pick one at random and pop it in. It’s boring. I like some of the PJ’s songs, but this is peak 2000 Toyota Corolla music imo. I unfortunately only started vibing at the chorus of We Float. However, I will give props for probably inspiring a lot of In Rainbows

I don't think I love this vocal style, or this singer song writing style. I don't feel anything strong on any of these songs. They don't grate or irritate me, but they also don't compel me either. I do like the track with Thom York. Repeats: this mess were in

Two albums by PJ Harvey in one week!?!? Am I being punished for something?

Fucking hell

As much as I try to like PJ Harvey, I always end up getting annoyed with her music.

Not come across PJ Harvey before. Unfortunately, I couldn't stand her voice!

Disappointing

My Absolute favourite PJ Harvey album, where many of her best songs were located, including: This is Love; You Said Something and Beautiful Feeling. None of her other records come close to the mastery she exhibits here for melody and lyrics. Boffo.

I used to think PJ Harvey was too shoegaze or whatever for me, but listening to this album as a whole and realizing how many single songs I love off of it (the thom yorke song haunts me always), I am now a full convert.

Awesome

This album won me over. I was NOT a fan at the beginning. It was just not what I was expecting. But by the third or fourth song, I understood. This is a gritty, emotional, breathtaking album. And it's not supposed to make you feel good. But it IS good. I ended up loving the album for all it is and all it isn't. I can't believe I had never heard of PJ Harvey before this.

Everything I love about 90s alt dialed up to 100. One of my favorites of all time. Polly Jean the woman you are!

Haven’t listened to this in a while, forgot just how good it is. I mean it has 2 Thom Yorke features!

banger

great album

Pj harvey, the only 2 times winner of the Mercury price (as of 2024) I find the Mercury prize weird, theres great winners: Suede, pulp, Arctic monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, English teacher. But some I really don’t like: roni size, badly drawn boy. But I still think it’s a great capsulation of styles. On ‘beautiful feeling’ I was literally just thinking, sounds like Radiohead, thom york is literally on there… and he’s on another ‘the mess we’re in’- which is a very good song (possibly the albums best), weirdly this is the closest he’s got to a mercury prize is this album. I like the heavy ones a good bit ‘big exit’ and ‘the whores hustle and the hustlers whore’ and ‘kamikaze’ great examples of this, on the latter two PJ also goes to an incredibly high register, respect for her there. Good fortune is a great single and this is love (even though I don’t find the latter to be one of the most exciting on the album as a whole). If it was between this/ dry and rid of me I’d pick this

Fabulous album

Not a dull moment to be found on this impeccably recorded, excellently presented, approachable yet artful piece of art. Incredibly impressive stuff that I will be relistening to as soon as possible.

PJ Harvey with Thom Yorke is one of the best things that’s ever happened

Gentler listen from PJ Harvey. The album has both light and shade, and a couple tracks featuring Thom Yorke. Thoroughly enjoyed this one.

жесть крутая тетя, я уже фанатка кажется she was pregnant with st vincent here

Amazing, some songs were a little too slow but overall it's a amazing. 5/5

So great

Not a hardship to listen to this one as it's only a few days that I did in "normal" l know that PJ was not happy with this one as the sound was too slick and mainstream for her, but the songs are so strong and the overall mood so cohesive, that it's power and brilliance is impossible to deny. In my favourite three albums of hers with Rid Of Me and Let England Shake.

PJ goes mainstream whilst still maintaining her integrity.

thom yorke jump scare

HEY!!!!

Its so hard to review someone who is the coolest person alive, no matter what she does. Like if she cooked me a plate of noodles it would be 5 stars just because its PJ. So, who am I to give anything but 5?

This will be my third PJ Harvey record on this album journey, following her early 1990s output. I already heard the single "Good Fortune" last year and liked it. How does the rest of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea compare? Simply put, this is a very exuberant alternative record, capturing the sort of joy and raw beauty that PJ must have felt towards the turn of the century. From the pursuit of love on "Good Fortune", to the positivity shown where she was at the time on "A Place Called Home", to outright confirming her sentiments on "Beautiful Feeling", her energy, complemented by the brighter textures in the guitar melodies and reverb, made this album come off very warm and pleasant to listen to. While an argument can be made that Stories was her "mainstream" record, the album still retains darker undertones and experimentation to keep it above a typical commercial pop sound. Opening with PJ's own observations of gun obsession on "Big Exit", the rat race of bustling city life on "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore", the implied aggressive sexual act on "Kamikaze" while dealing with the emotional fallout on "This Is Love", all culminating in the sentiment on "We Float" where the bid is made to make the most out of what life has to offer before our souls move on to the afterlife. Along the way, there are some abrasive guitar riffs on tracks like "This is Love" and "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" to match the grittier tone, along with notable contributions from Thom Yorke of Radiohead on tracks like "This Mess We're In" and "Beautiful Feeling" to add dimensionality to those tracks from having the male counterpart for the relationship exploration she delves into. Even more sobering is the piano-led ballad "Horses in My Dreams", where PJ recalls some vivid imagery in her sleep that could be interpreted as her free spirit, unburdened and able to roam wherever she wanted to. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was an impressive record. I know that PJ was already well-established as a singer-songwriter by this point, but even then, this album feels superbly ethereal in its sentiments of a moment of bliss, so frail and fleeting, yet it came when it needed to.

one of my favorites albums of 2000s. fuck it, it's 5/5.

I love PJ Harvey. I hate I've given a couple of her other albums 3 stars on here, she's one of my favorite all-time artists since I did a deepdive of her. This is probably my third favorite of hers behind Is This Desire and Dry, but each of her albums have their own feel. This one definitely makes me the happiest out of all of hers. The Thom Yorke cameo works so well, love the album art as well. 18th perfect album, 782 albums in. Rating: 5.0

I enjoyed this album. There is a timelessness about her voice that I love. I really enjoyed this album and will be returning to it over time

Absolutely fantastic album.Unique and fresh.Most of the songs are amazing!

THAT WAS SO FUCKING GOOD BRO 9.3/10. Like I have no idea what I was expecting but it had so much variety and some of the songs went so insanely hard. Like dear GOD the best on "We Float" is so mad. Absolutely AMAZING album I fucking loved it sm

It was nice hearing a female voice after do many male ones. Really good album. It even encouraged me to listen to some of her other songs. Added a coule to my playlist

What a great Album

I think PJ Harvey's vocal intonation and chosen production style for this album go together very well. The Thom Yorke contributions are crazy to me since both Harvey and Radiohead feel like such singular artists who exist outside of the tides of the music industry (which isn't true since both Harvey and Yorke have always drawn attention from critics whose praise was conditional on how 'experiemental' each new album was, with comparatively mainstream-sounding albums such as this one being snubbed as sellout-bait.) I am giving this an honorary 5 on account of To Bring You My Love not being on this list for some reason.

BANGER

Wow!!!! I REALLY love this album!!!! Had never heard of this group before. SOOOO GOOD!!!! Every song is a WIN!!!

tom yhorke es mi novio

Ja.

masterclass. flawless