PJ's 1995 album is, as you would expect, music with personality and presence. Polly is taking new directions: she plays with a new band, she writes on keyboards instead of guitar, and she has created an album more subtle than her last one. There is continuity in her themes, however: passion, obsession, and despair.
Send His Love to Me is a fiery acoustic number of pleading and desperation;
Working for the Man is moody and temperamental. Skip the headphones; put PJ in the biggest, bassiest stereo you can find, and crank it up all the way!
4-Track Demos is an album of demos by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released in October of 1993 by Island Records. It consists of 8 demos of songs from her previous album, Rid of Me, along with 6 demos of some unreleased tracks which never made it to being recorded with the three-piece PJ Harvey line-up. According to interviews with Harvey, all fourteen of these songs were written and demoed at her home between mid 1991 and autumn 1992. 4-Track Demos was Harvey's first self-produced album, a job she would not take on again until 2004's Uh Huh Her.
Background
Prior to the release of 4-Track Demos, Harvey had a history of releasing early versions of her songs. The demo versions for the songs on her debut Dry were released with the studio album in a limited edition double album format called Dry (Demonstration). She briefly contemplated releasing Rid of Me as a double album, consisting of the studio album on one disc and the demo versions on another. But, considering Rid of Me was to be her major label debut, a double album ended up being a move that neither Harvey nor Island wanted to make.Duffy, Tom. “Eager Fans Await Sophomore Disc by PJ Harvey,” Billboard, March 6, 1993, pg. 1.
Harvey explained the reason for releasing this record to Filter magazine in a 2004 interview: "4-Track Demos... was partly encouraged by Steve Albini . He loved the demos for that album so much he thought they should be out there and I tended to agree with him. It seemed like showing another side of what I do and introducing new songs that I hadn't recorded on a record. It was a lovely thing to do and it felt like the right time because my three-piece band had fallen apart and I was kind of in limbo before deciding where I was gonna be going again. So, it was just like a small interjection piece of me before I knew where I was going to be next."
Release and Reception
#0|759307|To Bring You My Love|Album|PJ Harvey|27 February 1995 (UK)28 February 1995 (US)|Alternative rock Indie rock Folk rock Punk blues|Island|To Bring You My Love(1995)|42:27|FloodPJ HarveyJohn Parish|Dance Hall at Louse Point(1996)|4-Track Demos(1993)|September–October 1994||PJ Harvey|To Bring You My Love
To Bring You My Love is the third studio album by British musician and singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in February of 1995. Recorded after the break-up of the PJ Harvey trio it stands as her first proper solo album. The songs on the album are heavily influenced by American blues music.
To produce the album, Harvey chose Flood, best known for his work with U2, Depeche Mode, and Nine Inch Nails. Harvey co-produced the record with Flood and John Parish. To Bring You My Love would be the first of Harvey's many collaborations with Flood and Parish. The music on the album was played largely by Harvey and Parish, with contributions from seasoned musicians Joe Gore, Mick Harvey, Jean-Marc Butty, and others. Many of the musicians who appeared on the album joined Harvey on tour to support it in 1995 and 1996.
To Bring you My Love is considered to be PJ Harvey's breakthrough. It garnered massive critical acclaim worldwide and became her best-selling album. The single "Down By the Water" received extensive airplay on radio and on MTV.
Background and History
PJ Harvey took a break from the spotlight in 1994. After releasing two studio albums (Dry and Rid of Me) and a compilation (4-Track Demos) in less than two years, she kept a low profile for most of the year. Harvey made only one public appearance in 1994, performing The Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" with Björk at the annual BRIT Awards.
Using the royalties she received from her first two albums, she bought a house in rural England close to her parents' home in Yeovil. She described her new home as "completely in the countryside. I have no neighbors. When I look out the window, all I see are fields."DeLuca, Dan, "Songwriter PJ Harvey is reaching out to her fans", The Philadelphia Inquirer, May 31, 1995, pg. E01 Living in near isolation, she began writing the songs that would appear on To Bring You My Love.
Music and Lyrics
The subject matter and tone of the songs on To Bring You My Love differs somewhat from what Harvey had presented on her earlier albums. The songs on Rid of Me (1993), for example, are aggressive in their depictions of relationships. Those songs deal with revenge ("Rid of Me", "Rub Til it Bleeds"), or act as an attack on traditional masculinityNiesel, Jeff. Album Review for To Bring You My Love, The San Diego Union Tribune, Entertainment section, p. 8. February 23, 1195 ("Man-Size", "50ft. Queenie", "Me-Jane"). Many of the songs on To Bring You My Love, however, are about the loss of, or longing for, a departed lover. The title track presents a narrator who not only desires love but is willing to sacrifice everything to get it. "I’ve lain with the devil," Harvey sings, "Cursed God above/Forsaken Heaven/To bring you my love."
Many of the songs on To Bring You My Love employ biblical imagery such a Heaven, God, and Jesus Christ. Harvey, however, is not a religious person. She wasn’t baptized and did not attend church as a child.Dollar, Steve. "Preview; PJ Harvey" The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, Arts section, p. 2M, June 4, 1995. She spoke of her use of religious imagery by saying "I look towards religion as possibly one means to finding an answer, to making sense why we’re here. That’s what drives the creative force, to make sense of one’s life. A very natural place to look is in that divine area, because it’s so strong and has been here long before us."
Many references are made to one of Harvey's major influences, Captain Beefheart. The opening line of the album, "I was born in the desert", is also the opening line of Beefheart's debut album, "Safe as Milk". The album's second track, Meet Ze Monsta, borrows the line "meet the monster tonight" from Beefheart's "Tropical Hot Dog Night", the second track of his album Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller), an album which Harvey has said had a particular impact on her. A lyrical resemblance to Beefheart's "Dropout Boogie" is also found on the track "I Think I'm a Mother".
Musically, the album is more complicated than Dry or Rid of Me. Two guitar parts are used in many of the songs, in most cases played by Harvey and Parish. Acoustic guitar and strings, used sparingly in her previous releases, can be heard throughout To Bring You My Love. Bells, chimes, and a vibraphone add to the atmosphere of the recording. Keyboards and organ are also used extensively, a result of much of the album being composed on a Yamaha keyboard Harvey bought second-hand.Rosen, Craig, "U.S. radio brings Harvey its love- 4th Island set poised for mainstream", Billboard, February 18, 1995. The deep, rumbling organ tones provide many of the lower notes on the album, replacing traditional basslines.Jenkins, Mark, "PJ Harvey: Electric Blue", The Washington Post, Sunday Arts, p.G10, March 5, 1995. The bass played by Mick Harvey on "Long Snake Moan" is one of the few times an actual bass is heard on the album.
Recording
To Bring You My Love was Harvey's first album proper since disbanding the original PJ Harvey trio in 1993. For this recording she recruited producer Flood (Depeche Mode, U2, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins), her old Automatic Dlamini bandmate John Parish and a new line-up of session musicians including Joe Gore, Eric Drew Feldman, Mick Harvey and Jean-Marc Butty. She herself played guitar, keyboards, vibes and bells on the record, as well as co-producing it with Flood and John Parish.
Reception
As her second full-length release on a major label, To Bring You My Love received a heavy promotional push from Island Records. Extensive MTV rotation and college radio airplay for the first single "Down by the Water" — with its eccentric, eye-catching Maria Mochnacz-directed music video of Harvey drowning in an emerald pond while wearing an extravagant wig, heavy make-up and a slinky red satin evening gown — gave Harvey her biggest radio hit to date, reaching #2 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart. The album itself debuted at #40 on the Billboard chart and #12 in her native UK, and went on to sell roughly one million copies. The moderate commercial breakthrough of To Bring You My Love certainly had nothing to do with any scaling-down of her trademark lyrical intensity: the infanticide fable "Down by the Water" — whose whispered coda of "Little fish big fish swimming in the water/Come back here, man, gimme my daughter" references the old Leadbelly blues standard "Salty Dog" — ostensibly deals with a mother drowning her child.
The critical response was overwhelmingly positive — Rolling Stone praised the record as "astonishing… a true, enduring piece of art" in its four-star review, People claimed that "Harvey's raw, dense music rivals that of Bob Dylan himself for sheer gut-wrenching melodrama" and Hot Press raved, "this is a creation of oceanic beauty, depth and mystery in which all of the themes previously explored in fragments by Harvey are united in a rich and complex whole".
Harvey and her new five-piece live band supported the album with a 10-month worldwide tour that included a three-month stint opening for the band Live in the US, and a now-legendary performance at the UK's Glastonbury Festival wearing a shocking pink catsuit and black Wonderbra.
Harvey told Filter in 2004, "To Bring You My Love was my first real venture into production and to use an incredible producer like Flood, who painted an atmosphere over my songs that I hadn't heard before, I was working with new musicians — it was all very, very exciting. And very, very draining. That was a difficult time in my life, as was the time of Is This Desire?"
In 2005, Diplo sampled "Down By The Water" for a remix of the Mike Jones single "Still Tippin'" and then again the following year on Plastic Little's indie rap track "Now I Holler."
Accolades
The album received huge critical acclaim. It was voted as the best album of the year in The Village Voice's Pazz & Jop critics poll, and was also voted the year's number-one album by publications such as Rolling Stone, The New York Times, People, USA Today, Hot Press and, in "the biggest landslide victory in 15 years", the Los Angeles Times. It featured in Top Ten lists for magazines like Spin, NME, Melody Maker and Mojo, though a contrarian Time list dubbed it the "Worst Album of 1995.", Time, December 25, 1995. The album received two Grammy Award nominations as Best Alternative Music Performance and Best Female Rock Vocal for the single "Down by the Water", and was nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. SPIN magazine later ranked it at number 3 in a list of the best albums of the 90s. In 2003, the album was ranked number 435 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Slant Magazine, in 2011, rated To Bring You My Love as the 20th best album of the 90s. http As of 2005, (according to AskBillboard) To Bring You My Love has sold 375,000 copies in the US.
Personnel
*PJ Harvey: vocals, guitar, piano, Hammond organ, bells, strings, chimes, marimba, vibraphone, percussion, producer
*John Parish: guitar, organ, percussion, drums, producer
*Flood: producer, engineer, mixing
*Mick Harvey: bass, Hammond organ
*Joe Gore: guitar, e-bow
*Jean-Marc Butty: drums, percussion
*Joe Dilworth: drums
*Pete Thomas: string arrangements
*Sonia Slany: violin
*Jules Singleton: viola
*Jocelyn Pook: viola
*Sian Bell: cello
*Valerie Philips: photography
*Kate Garner: photography
*Cally: artwork
Charts
Album
Singles
References
Category:1995 albums
Category:PJ Harvey albums
Category:Albums produced by Flood
Category:Island Records albums
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This text has been derived from 4-Track Demos on Wikipedia and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0
