'Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea' by PJ Harvey
Trotter’s Top Ten position : 1 in 2000
UK Chart high : 23 in 2000
So here's another Mercury Prize winner (and one that didn't enjoy an uplift in sales by the looks of things considering it never got higher than its criminally low first week chart position of 23 - shame on you Britain). Without a doubt Polly Harvey has one of the best voices I've ever heard live and, rarely, one that actually sounds better live than on record. 'Stories...' saw her move away from charming tales of drowning babies in the river or beheading her lover to a deceptively simpler collection of love songs wrapped around her experiences in New York (the city) and of her home in the west country (the sea). In terms of being a rock and role model its worth remembering that the likes of Karen O, Florence, Marina, KT, Coco and Ellie Goulding owe a lot to PJ's trailblazing - a strong woman in control without having to flash the flesh. On the album, there's a ridiculous amount of standouts; the brilliant overlapping duet with Thom Yorke ('This Mess We're In') who alarmingly sounds almost tender here (steady girls!), the pounding 'Good Fortune' where she only ever actually sings of bad fortune and then there's the hypnotic, sublime 'We Float' which leads into the acerbic 'Wicked Tongue' to close the album. Polly would subsequently shy away from the heavier electric guitar sounds of this album on future releases and instead dress up like a Victorian ghost and whisper at a pian - which to me is a great shame given how iconic an image and sound she created here, thanks in part to the brilliant relationship she developed with director Sophie Muller. It's an equally great shame that PJ Harvey seems all but forgotten nowadays particularly in the music press. You could do a lot worse than pick up this album and the rest of her back catalogue to remind yourself of what a driving force she's been to British female-fronted rock.
Look at This is Love ; Good Fortune ; A Place Called Home ; You Said Something (live)
Listen to a sampling of the Top Fifty on Spotify as we go or the 'one from each album' version
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