Consumer Guide Album

PJ Harvey: To Bring You My Love [Island, 1995]
Four albums in three years, each sonically distinct, each adding a thematic facet to a coherent sensibility. Pretty good for an alleged up-and-comer, eh? In fact, major, and I'll reserve the G-word if you will. Bored with raunchy details, she's going for universals: salvation, rapture, fulfillment, escape. Putting aside her rough lead guitar as unequal to this quest, she's applied herself instead to opera lessons that in no way prettify vocals that were pretty amazing even before they assumed all this range, modulation, and command, and traded in Steve Albini for Flood to help her get at some postsexual imperatives. The fuller sound they arrive at is far from slick--her buzzy keybs are as ominous as her guitar, her register shifts weirder than ever, and the mix can get disconcertingly murky. So watch out for pigeonholes. To fixate on blues or sex is to sell short religious yearnings, avant-garde affinities, and pop potential that are all intensified on an album whose generalization level only magnifies its impact. And to figure she's hellbent on the big time is not to think at all. A