Is This Desire?

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The main character in Working For the Man could, theoretically be a travelling salesman with religious leanings, but it seems considerably more likely he’s a serial killer: certainly, the murmured, close-mic’d vocal and skulking spookiness of the music – not to mention its abrupt ending – suggest something very unpleasant indeed. 29. Oh My Lover (1992) As ferocious screw-you statements of unbiddable artistic independence go, Harvey’s major label debut takes some beating. Which brings us to Rub Til It Bleeds: five crawling, anxiety-inducing minutes during which Harvey offers to – and let us not mince words here – wank someone off so violently she draws blood. See you on Top of the Pops! 19. Reeling (1993)

In retrospect, it seems faintly amazing that To Bring You My Love was a commercial breakthrough: admittedly less confrontational than Rid of Me, it was still deeply uneasy listening, as evidenced by The Dancer, a stunning exercise in trembling tension, filled with dark religious imagery and references to opera. A love song, no less. 23. You Said Something (2000) Harvey spoke about the making of the album in an interview with Filter magazine in 2004, indicating it was the project of which, to date, she was proudest. "Again working with Flood, again trying to find new ground, but a particularly difficult time in my life. So, it was a very, very difficult, difficult record to make and still one I find very difficult to listen to, but probably my favorite record that I've made because it had a lot of guts. I mean, I was making extremely difficult music, experimenting with techniques I hadn't used before and not really caring what other people thought about it. I'm quite proud of that one." She also told The Telegraph, "I do think Is This Desire? is the best record I ever made—maybe ever will make—and I feel that that was probably the highlight of my career. I gave 100 per cent of myself to that record. Maybe that was detrimental to my health at the same time." And essentially, this is why I rank this album higher than any of her preceding or subsequent ones; there are just too many emotional stories and secrets waiting to be unraveled, all of which incredibly significant in their individual compelling ways, and in some ways, even entwined.Harvey was at pains to suggest that Stories From the City … was not her “New York album”. For all its geographical references to Manhattan, You Said Something sounds weirdly British – there is a distinctly folky lilt to the guitars – making it the perfect summation of the album’s Englishwoman-abroad theme. 22. A Perfect Day Elise (1998) Leah” proved a turning point. She began therapy while continuing to work on the record, and her growing understanding of herself crept onto Is This Desire?. She composed on a keyboard rather than her usual guitar, which affected her process: hunched over a small portable keyboard, she found herself writing “more thoughtfully.” British album certifications – PJ Harvey – Is This Desire?". British Phonographic Industry . Retrieved 13 August 2018. Harris, John (27 September 2007). "Songs of innocence and experience". The Guardian. Film & Music p. 10 . Retrieved 19 March 2009. Posted on 28 September 2007. Her record label apparently claimed that Harvey’s first collaborative album with John Parish, Dance Hall at Louse Point, was “commercial suicide”, but listening to That Was My Veil, it is hard to see what the problem was: it’s a fantastic song, Parish’s music so in tune with Harvey’s lyric you would never know two writers were involved. 33. The Sandman (2019)

She went into therapy and, at some point, also moved into the basement flat of a house owned by her bandmate and collaborator John Parish, and video and art director Maria Mochnacz. The gesture represented more than just goodwill: “They basically saved me,” Harvey admitted to The Observer. “I needed to be rescued, and I was.” She recalled writing songs for Is This Desire? in this subterranean space, which was dark and cloistered, and focused on the demos her flatmates liked the most. The swaggering machismo of the old Bo Diddley hambone beat chaotically, thrillingly pressed into the service of a song about the idiocy of swaggering machismo: “Oh damn your chest-beating,” offers the narrator, clearly thoroughly bored of life as Tarzan’s significant other, “just stop your screaming.” 25. The Piano (2007)The PJ Harvey song that even people who find PJ Harvey too much seem to love, Down By the Water is still remarkably strong stuff: a song about a mother murdering her daughter, apparently for some sexual transgression, set to abrasive distorted organ, ending with a whispered, spine-chilling nursery rhyme. 1. Rid of Me (1993) There is a compelling argument that Let England Shake is Harvey’s masterpiece: its richness and breadth are clear here, an implausibly pretty, echo-drenched song about rioting cities and drowning in sewage, bolstered by a sample from Niney the Observer’s 1970 reggae hit Blood and Fire. 5. Sheela Na Gig (1992) Harvey’s 1992 debut album, Dry, showcased all of her promise right out of the gate. It set the bar high for an artist whose career would span three decades. And while her follow-up LPs, Rid of Me (1993) and To Bring You My Love (1995), showed Harvey’s sonic and lyrical expansiveness, Is This Desire? honed in on her grand ambitions with its subjugated undertones. A new reissue featuring the demos for Is This Desire? is out on Jan. 29, and will remind fans of the magic Harvey effortlessly brings to each and every one of her projects.

Harvey has said she finds Desire both difficult to listen to and a source of great pride. Referring to its cast of identity-masking characters, she told the NME, “Whatever I’ve written all comes from inside me and my experience. Whether I write about that in another person’s name or my own, there’s a lot of me in there. Because I finally feel comfortable saying ‘I am Polly.’” More than 20 years later, it stands as the record that set Polly free from emotional bondage. I was doing a lot of emotional work [when she began studio sessions in 1997],” she shared on an interview disc that accompanied Desire. Her self-reflection reached the point where she had to abandon the sessions for a while: “I just wanted to stop, and start looking at my life as Polly, rather than my life as a songwriter.” By the time recording resumed in spring 1998, she’d devised a way to convey “life as Polly” without the danger of completely exposing herself. the name joe(seph) is mentioned in the album in previous songs; those songs being, "the garden," and "perfect day, elise." Is This Desire? is particularly moving when it articulates how complicated desire affects women. The protagonist of “A Perfect Day Elise” witnesses the suicide of a beloved; “Catherine” is from the point of view of someone spurned by (and deeply jealous of) the titular character; “Joy” is consumed by “her own innocence” and feels so hopeless she’d rather go blind than remain in her current state.

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However, recording Is This Desire? was another fraught process. Harvey and her production collaborators, Flood and Head, did the first recording sessions in 1997, and then walked away from the music. “I chose to just leave it for a while,” she said in an interview disc accompanying the album. “I was doing a lot of emotional work at that time, and I just needed a break from everything. I just wanted to stop and start looking at my life as Polly, rather than my life as a songwriter-performer.” both of them, however, are brought to the same questions of desire and it's significance. joe and dawn seem to wonder if the liason was worth the changes that would come as a result. joe wonders if all the suffering that he bears after he sleeps with another is worth the pleasure. perhaps it was bad sex, to put it bluntly, that makes them doubt the expirience. they expected pleasure, and may have been let down. or, perhaps they were looking for some sort of uplifting power in their union, and found nothing. either way, they're doubting themselves, the act itself, and each other.

Is This Desire? is pure beauty in every sense of the word. It gives me the goosebumps because we've all asked ourselves the same question or felt the same way, at some point in time. There's something seriously haunting about PJ's voice here too (the high and low notes, the way she grinds down on some verses) and the melodramatic undertoned music that harmonizes the song in such a magnificent and scenic way. The way it builds up, the whole story unraveling, the climax, giving into desire and lust...it's a piece of brilliance that a lot of people will just disregard as another song, but if they took the time to appreciate every word and guitar chord, I've no doubt it will shake them too. John Parish reflected on the album's recording in 2021: "[Is This Desire?] is probably the most compromised album that Polly's made, largely to do with the time over which it was made ... There were two long recordings sessions and almost a year's gap between them. The bulk of the first session took place in a small studio in Yeovil, so it was much more Heath Robinson setup, and the second session, most or all of it took place in a huge expensive London studio, so there were differences in the technical capabilities of the studio, but the same musicians basically in both sessions and same producers and engineers. It’s very difficult to sustain the identity of a record like that. It was also the only record where the record company came in and had a degree of creative input, which had never been sanctioned on any of the other records, certainly none of the other records I was involved with. The record company often never heard anything until they got the mastered album! ... on this album there were a couple of people who I felt took advantage of the fact Polly wasn't very well at that time. Normally she's so decisive and strong about what she feels, about what's going to happen, but on that record she wavered in the middle." [5] Oldham, James (22 September 1998). "PJ Harvey – Is This Desire?". NME. Archived from the original on 2 October 2000 . Retrieved 7 May 2016.

Is This Desire? (CD). PJ Harvey. Island Records. 1998. LC 0407. {{ cite AV media notes}}: CS1 maint: others in cite AV media (notes) ( link)