The Sunday Telegraph 27-9-98

PJ Harvey Is This Desire?

Either my mind has been warped by proud-father-of-new-baby-boy chemicals or this is the most fantastic record I’ve heard this year. Certainly, as a long-standing fan of the Dorset chanteuse, I’m enormously relieved that she’s still capable of making brilliant records In the four arid years that followed her last masterpiece, To Bring You My Love, this seemed in some doubt. Indeed, after her cacophonous, scarily arty collaboration with John Parish - Dance Hall At Louse Point - I rather feared that she might have done a Tricky and disappeared up her own bottom.

Is This Desire?, however, finds her back on classic form with a mix of sultry, slow-burn, country-inflected ballads and shrieking, visceral guitar rock. It’s so seductively tuneful, so beautifully performed, so immaculately arranged and produced, if fact, that it makes me feel almost as warm and gooey as my baby does. Which has got to be a pretty strong recommendation, hasn’t it?

 

James Delingpole

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