P.J. Harvey

As great as her second LP, Dry, was there were those who found Steve Albini's polarizing production too abrasive. These original demos were released months later in response to that criticism. Not that the tracks are any less gut-wrenching than Dry's, but Harvey, armed with just an electric guitar, delivers a much more direct and unsettlingly brilliant album.

The pop Industry loves to simulate authenticity, a trick that, like the manufacturing of fake
antiques, puts demands on the consumer. It's hard to tell an original (Michelle Shocked's
The Texas Campfire Tapes) from a copy (the Cowboy Junkies). So make no mistake: Raw,
revelatory and indispensable, 4-Track Demos is no mere PJ Harvey Unplugged. These 14
cuts, recorded by English songwriter Polly Jean Harvey in 1992 on a four-track,... More >

All right, so this isn't a cult artist's first ripoff. The new songs assure that. "Easy," "M-Bike," "Hardly Wait," and especially the fleshpotted "Reeling"--where "Robert De Niro sit on my face" leaves no doubt about whose blow-job queen she wants to be--share the kind of eager emotionality that makes Steve Albini cringe, and the same looseness animates this "Yuri-G." But I don't know how anyone can compare Rid of Me's "Rid of Me" without succumbing to its marshalled power, or concluding that with some forethought she could find even more juice in her sexual enthusiasm. She is a performer, after all. (Grade - B+)