Customer Reviews

Is This Desire? (with bonus disc)

5 star:		(75)
4 star:		(26)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This may be one of my favorite records of 1998, but it makes for no easy listen. The best songs on this album ( Angeline, The Sky Lit Up, The Wind, My Beautiful Leah, A Perfect Day Elise, Catherine, The Garden, No Girl So Sweet, and Is This Desire?) conjur up rare emotions and sweet atmospheres, but there is also an air of the grotesque. While earlier albums like Dry and Rid Of Me made her emotions known ate blistering levels, Is This Desire makes them known at a whisper. Her songwriting is some of the scariest I have ever heard here (like the line, "God is the sweat running down his back, the water turns her blond hair black.") It's an uncomfortable album, made for sitting in a chair watching your knuckles turn white.

This 'extra tracks' version of "Is This Desire?" is amazing. It includes the actual album plus another cd along with it that has tracks ["The Northwood," "Sweeter than anything," "The Bay," and an instrumental] from the "Perfect Day Elise" singles. "The Northwood is raw, like the recordings found on "4-Track Demos." It is the best raw recording of Polly's that I have ever heard. "The Bay" is also incredible. I wish that someday Island Records will re-release this album. It's incredible.

PJ Harvey is a gifted songwriter and a great performer. She also tends to write about things you don't want to hear about and shout them for everyone to hear, much like Patti Smith and Tori Amos. This record is not different. Desire can be beautiful and destructive. Here, Ms. Harvey concentrates on the destructive face but she also includes so much beauty in this album, that its eerie effect is coated with sugar.
Monologues of love, dusty lust, hidden passion, sexual madness, and personal resilience are a few of the themes she handles here, each one in a seperate short story with its own players.
The songwriter PJ Harvey takes a while to get used to because of her ventures into hard sonic and lyrical terrain, but when a listener gives this more than one or two tries, he/she will comprehend the artist's strong vision.
The performer Harvey is, however, going to leave audiences stupefied. She plays every character of each short story of this with fire, dedication and chameleon skills. You can hear the fragile prostitute of "Angelene", and you can hear the creeping madness in every word of "Perfect Day, Elise". The erotic promise of "No Girl so Sweet" manages to be sensual and dirty without becoming crude.
Thousands of albums about desire have been released. What makes this difference is the respect to the listener and PJ Harvey's skill and obvious amount of work

I was first introduced to PJ Harvey by my true love when we first met. He managed to leave this CD at my apartment one day... it was a great way of seducing me; conjuring up all sorts of desire and passion.

That was 2 years ago. I have since bought all of her albums, yet this one never leaves my CD player to this day.

I find the emotion and style of this album quite impossible to put into words. It is truly a mood unto itself. It trancends any definition of what I call music, and becomes more of an inner experience, touching every aspect of instinct and primal identity.

As an artist and a female, I am constantly absorbing the atmosphere around me, searching for inspiration and expression. This album has been an invaluable source for creating. Put this CD on repeat and paint and paint. Also, when trying to connect with people as subjects for photography, this album has been a great way of allowing them to get intouch with the emotion of a possible darker, sensuous, deeper side of themselves than they had known that truly comes across in photographs.

This album is much more than music. There are so many subtlties and undercurrents running through this album and the woman who created it, that it becomes quite an experience everytime you hear it.

I cannot imagine anyone who is a passionate individual not choking on their own pleasure on having found this album.

After delivering what many would consider to be the most prominent album of her career, PJ Harvey fled from the spotlight and lived for three and a half years in virtual isolation on her parents' farm in Yeovil. The album she produced when she resurfaced lacked the bluesy punk-riffs and tongue-in-cheek lyrics of her earlier albums, utilizing instead experimental fuzzy guitars and synthesizers. It was brief, complex, evasive, and rife with subtly rendered emotional distress. It was also, in my opinion as well as (I have read) Ms. Polly Jean's, her most finely-crafted album ever.

1. Angelene-A slow, folksy ballad that seems to be about a wayward woman who gives herself over to many men while secretly pining for an overseas lover. It features Harvey singing plainly and simply in a husky voice. Some of the lyrics are thought to pay tribute to a J.D. Salinger short story entitled "Pretty mouth and green my eyes", which is directly quoted at one point in the song.

2. The Sky Lit Up-This song is very short. It seems to be about someone enjoying a happy night on the town and yet at the same time, there seems to be something awry about it. It ends with PJ Harvey wailing, "the sky lit up" in a high-pitched tone.

3. The Wind-A very quiet song with verses told in hushed whispers and a chorus that is delivered in a haunting tone; very ominous.

4. My Beautiful Leah-Another short one. This song has these weird fuzzy guitars playing in the background which, in conjunction with Harvey's drone, give it a numbing atmosphere so that one can almost envision her stumbling around on a dark night trying to find the girl she is looking for.

5. A Perfect Day, Elise-An incredible song. There is something about the explosion of trippy chords at the beginning of this song which always makes me want to get up and dance (and no, I'm not trained in that discipline so I resist the urge). This is one of those songs that I can listen to over and over again. The most intriguing thing about it is that it seems to be such a happy song but if you listen closely to the lyrics, the main character actually commits suicide in the end, rendering the whole song almost sarcastic. Allegedly, this song is based on another J.D. Salinger story entitled "A Perfect Day for Bananafish".

6. Catherine-Another incredible song, only this one is dark and full of yearning, probably the broodiest song on an already broody album. One cannot help but love how the tension builds as Harvey moans, "I envy the road, the ground you tread under..." in what I am told is classic Billie Holiday style, only to culminate in the curse, "Til the light shines on me, I damn to hell every second you breathe..." This song contains some lyrics that resemble quotes from Emily Bronte's WUTHERING HEIGHTS.

7. Electric Light-This song was harder for me to get into. It is very quiet and the lyrics are delivered in a sort of murmur with those fuzzy guitars humming in the background. The lyrics are somewhat powerful yet delivered unassumingly. I like this song just not as much as a lot of the others.

8. The Garden-PJ Harvey returns to her biblical roots with this song about a liaison in a garden of good and evil. To be honest, this is another one that I didn't get into as much, but it's still decent.

9. Joy-A very difficult song, delivered in a screechy wail that is almost impossible to listen to yet demands to be hard all-the-more. The instruments in this song include more off-beat guitars as well as rattling drums that sound almost like broken pipes or other industrial equipment. This is certainly a disturbing song, allegedly, it pays homage to a Flannery O'Connor short story. Not one of my favorites, but still desperate to be heard.

10. The River-One of the most powerful tracks on the album and the longest as well. One cannot help but feel psychological cleansed as PJ Harvey repeats again and again, "Throw your pain in the river". It ends with a haunting brass instrumental part. This song also is supposed to be based on a Flannery O'Connor story of the same title. It was this song which inspired me to buy this album. One of my favorites.

11. No Girl So Sweet-For me, this is the most harrowing song on the album. It starts off with weird squeaky beats and then has PJ Harvey singing in a fuzzed-over, anguished roar/wail. I think everyone can identify with lines such as: "How much more can you take from me? I'd like to take you inside my head. I'd like to take you inside of me." This song is yet again thought to be inspired by a Flannery O'Connor story. Another one of my favorites on the album; quite disturbing, but great.

12. Is This Desire?-The final, titular track on the album. For the first twenty seconds all you can hear is a very soft humming noise, then gradually Polly starts singing and the song slides into gear in a manner that is both elusive and seductive. I cannot tell if this song, with its references to Joseph out in nature has any Biblical allusions, but it is certainly menacing and questioning at the same time. An apt conclusion.

When I first bought this album, I was somewhat disappointed. Now, I think it is my second favorite album of all-time. My advice would be not to give up on it easily. No, it is not initially as striking as some of Harvey's other works, but instead it will subtly slip under your skin until you find yourself embedded in the madness of the world Harvey is creating. This album is supposed to be Harvey's tribute to literature and judging from the number of derivations from classical works, not to mention the incredibly broody, morose nature of this album, that would certainly make sense. This is PJ Harvey in third-person, no longer revealing personality traits but whole people. One of my favorite things about this album is how so many of the songs seem so ordinary and serene yet if you listen closely, you realize there is something not quite right about them. In fact, there is something horribly disturbing and depressing about all of them.

This album is a much mellower, subdued album both sonically and lyrically than her previous two albums. It's like the morning after the night before. An emphasis in placed on distorted synths that replaced the white noise haze of before. The tracks in general sound hazy and distant, giving the album a lathargic feeling: neither awake nor totally asleep.

Not that the album doesn't have its powerful moments. 'The Sky Lit Up' and 'No Girl So Sweet' are frantic sonic explosions, PJs voice intense enough to jolt one out of the chill out semi slumber the other tracks induce. 'A Perfect Day Elise' is enough franctic upbeat track in a rather catchy danceified way. 'Joy' with monotone singing and grating distorted sonic effects, will scare the life out of you.

'The Wind' 'The Garden' and 'The River' seem almost as a trilogy dispersed accross the album, beautiful piano based ballads combine with PJ's spiritual fascination with the elements. 'The River' in particular, is just so beautiful.

The remainder of the album is essentially swampy blues heightened by Nine Inch Nails style warped sound effects. Best examples are 'My Beautiful Leah' 'Catherine' and 'Electic Light.' The title track is more acoustic based whereas 'Angelene,' my favorite track off the album, sounds much like one of Patti Smith's piano based ballads from her Horses album (think Free Money or Elegie.)

Lyrically, this album isn't as provocative or as stark as 'To Bring You My Love' but retains a more enigmatic mysterious quality with a narrative skill in some songs that rivals and almost outmatches Dylan. While not depressing, the songs do evoke either resignated melancholy or creepy brooding.

It isn't the most assesible of albums, none of PJs material is. However its worth the 'what the hell' sensation one will get from the first couple of listens and once that passes this is one of the msot listenable offerings she has ever produced.

I recently listened to the entire succession of Polly Jean Harvey's major albums, with various permutations of a band, to trace her evolution as an artist. With "Rid of Me," she unwittingly added a tight, professional production to the edgy, blunt rock of "Dry." This could have been unravelled by its uncoventional interpretation in "Four Track Demos," which doesn't count, but the almighty PJ took charge with "To Bring You My Love," which marked her emergence as an independent force, and established the fruition of a century of music. "Dance Hall at Louse Point," another collaboration with innovative musician John Parish, allowed PJ to "throw her weight around" more, exploring her mesmerizing vocal style and presenting an even more experimental, avant-garde style. Now, PJ Harvey is the most respected woman in rock, and she has evolved into a more focused but still daring and experimental artist in "Is This Desire," which holds its own against all her previous work, and is consequently the most impressive album of 1998.

Harvey and Flood have always had a particular way of opening an album with a "theme song," setting the tone for the rest of the work. "Angelene" does not defy this consistency; it's a dark, haunting, literate piece of poetry underneath a restrained folk song. As an effective touch, "The Sky Lit Up" rebels against it; it is the kind of exhilarating, masterfully crafted song that Harvey has gradually perfected.

Along the way, there is the characteristic curio ("Electric Light," which serves the same purpose as "Fitter, Happier" on Radiohead's "OK Computer"), a work of mournful beauty (piano-driven "The River"), and a marvelous, melancholy resolution ("Is This Desire?")

However, the centerpiece of the album is a tour-de-force, a brilliantly executed chain of ghost stories centering around fully-developed female characters, each more sinister and elegiac than the last: the whispered "The Wind," the haunting, almost satirical "My Beautiful Leah," the single "A Perfect Day Elise" in its appropriate context, and the utterly brilliant "Catherine," perhaps a modern take on Robert Browning's legendary poem "Porphyria's Lover."

Alogether, every track is as sonically innovative and compelling as Harvey's fans have come to expect. While she doesn't throw her voice around as much, she instead bathes it in a glorious, evocative production, perhaps taking a cue from Japanese art, in which the meaning of the subject exists in its environment. Of course, her raw beauty and power is all there, and while her lyrical style has lost its acerbically satirical edge, this has been replaced by a greater depth of emotion and range, a perfected method of storytelling, and a more vivid poetic exploration of the realm of shadows. PJ's oeuvre has never looked better.

1. i chose to review this because it is my favorite of polly's records. it happens to be one of the best albums ever.
2. the drum programming is very dirty. i always like grimey wu-tang style drums that have distortion and filtering and EQ knobs turned in the wrong direction. there are lots of these little sonic treats sprinkled throughout the lp. sometimes they jump out at you like bones breaking and sometimes they are little skittish noises and samples. whatever it is, it succeeds in evoking raw animalistic pleasure. it could have sounded dated but by grimey-ing up he beats they sound like organic creatures's voices than electronic drums.
3. this record came out post ok computer. everyone was trying to top that record and since then the approach to music making from most artists has been about constructing good albums.
4. With the technology at hand, sound manipulation is so easy that virtually anything you hear in your head can be put onto "tape". In the hands of a psycho, the results can be dangerous but far more rewarding. in polly's case, she takes full advantage of the technology, lyrically and sonically projecting her psychosis onto these characters. i would say she is a deeper more soulful trent reznor. also more terrifying and sensual than reznor.

This album is for anyone who wants to explore themselves through musical experimentation. Beyond it's dark exterior and the initial horrors we encounter in her stories, at its core, it is a record that heals wounds by exposing them.

After a pretty dull year in music, PJ Harvey has released what may just be the best release of 1998. I have played this cd everyday since I purchased it on September 29th. It just gets better with each listen. It's hard to pick a favorite track, but I'd say "The Garden" may just be one of the best and haunting tracks I've ever heard from any artist. I've been a fan of PJ Harvey since her debut cd, "Dry". She is artisticly in my opinon the best female singer in music today. She also plays a wicked guitar. I could gush all night about Polly Jean, but I'll just say this... If you're not a fan of her music, please give it a try. You'll love it! "Is This Desire" is truely a masterpiece. The best release of 1998!

Anyone who has stuck with Polly Jean Harvey through the years has gotten used to her ever changing sound. "Dry" is surely one of the best debut albums in history, as "Rid of Me" is easily one of the angriest follow ups. Then, surprise, she ditches her band, puts on a red dress and croons her way through the ambient blues of "To Bring You My Love". This she followed with a mish mash collaboration record with John Parish, "Dance Hall at Louse Point", which gave up the melodies (he wrote the music, she wrote the words) for experimentation. But now she's back on her own, and the result combines the styles of "Love" with "Dance Hall" to create her most personal album ever.

The highlight here is the first song, "Angelene", a sweeping tour de force about a prostitute who longs for something better. She's just one of the many characters Harvey envokes... Like all great blues artists, Harvey knows that you reveal the personal best through other's eyes, and this she does with finesse. We hear the whispered story of Catherine in "The Wind" only to hear Catherine's lover pining for her in "Catherine" but two songs later. So is this a rock opera? Hardly; it is an investigation into the psyche, into what makes up our lives and how we wish there were more. On the final title track, Harvey finds no answer for her characters, just wonders if the emotion she's feeling is real... Then backs away from it. Again, like any good blues artist, she offers only questions, and leaves the solution to the listener.

Unlike most blues performers, though, the music is hardly traditional. Some tracks have an ambience ("The Wind"), others a torrential, experimental attack similar to that "Dance Hall" album, but this time with purpose ("The Sky Lit Up", "No Girl So Sweet"). We hear the blues, we hear electronica, we even hear a bit of the old kick of Harvey's first two albums in the single "A Perfect Day Elise" (note that original drummer Rob Ellis is thankfully back on board). But most of all we hear a vulnerability the Harvey of "Rid of Me" didn't know. A vulnerability only maturity brings. Check this album out, but do so by yourself... On a rainy night, when you're wondering to yourself where desire might take you.