An album of contradictions and contrasts, PJ Harvey’s Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea is absolutely full of life.
Polly Jean Harvey is one of the most vital and distinct songwriters around, from her raw and primal origins to her more recent orchestrations and installations; she is utterly inimitable. You can drop the needle on any of PJ Harvey’s albums and be assured of a thrilling listening experience, so we just picked the album that we listen to most to start off getting her spun on Sunday Classic.
Currently sitting at the middle point in her immaculate ten album discography, Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea was something of a turning point. Produced with long time collaborators Rob Ellis and Mick Harvey, it was dubbed her “love” album on release, but listening to it (nearly) twenty-five years on, there are as many bristlingly-dark moments as there are stadium-rock-sized bangers. Without necessarily being a departure, the album presents with less of the abrasiveness of her early releases and - in particular on album opener Big Exit - she is positively iridescent. 
“I want this album to sing and fly and be full of reverb and lush layers of melody. I want it to be my beautiful, sumptuous, lovely piece of work.”
- PJ Harvey speaking to Q Magazine.
1995’s Bring You My Love and 1998’s Is This Desire? are two of Harvey’s hardest or iciest albums, so Stories… always had the potential to show a different shade. After spending time in New York acting in the Hal Hartley film The Book Of Life, the city became the backdrop to the album, an energised location for nights on roof tops and a very different adaptation of the ‘New York sound’. Stories… pre-dates The Strokes Is This It and the NYC renaissance, sharing more moments perhaps with Television’s nervy frenetics than anything else, but it is more the energy of love, sex and possibility that really captured the New Yorkishness. With so much conjecture about who the protagonist is, who wants to watch who undress and other lifebloods of that city, it was conversely recorded in the English countryside and that faucet of her remains key too. The arrangements and production are really fantastic, raw, powerful and hugely commanding as a garage band, but also finding space for her voice to really soar. Another lush dynamic is Thom Yorke’s vocal across the album and how Harvey creates space to wrap around him.
She was in a purple patch for the duets thinking about it, with Piano Fire on Sparklhorse’s It's a Wonderful Life album following a year later.
Photo: Recording the album. Maria Mochnacz.
It is not all pop and rose-tinted lens, her rich imagery gets as dark as you’d expect and listening to the accompanying demos give fascinating insight into some of the album's biggest moments stripped right back. Released in October 2020, the album would go on to pick up multiple grammy nominations and famously win the 2001 Mercury Music Prize (her first of two). It is euphoric and it is pensive. It is reflective and it is full of urges. Stories… is a hugely dynamic album and whether she is bashing riffs and screaming, or casting dim light into emotional shadows, it is hugely evocative stuff.
Man, she is the best.