PJ Harvey – Is This Desire?
I’ve put it on the record both recently and in the past, and I stand by it: Rid of Me is PJ Harvey’s best album, and one of the best albums made by anyone ever. It’s an absolute beast of a rock record that never holds back and goes right for the throat. As Sun Ra might say, it’s a motherfucker.
BUT: Is This Desire? is so close to being her best it’s a pretty damn close race. I might be remembering this slightly wrong, since I’ve proven throughout the history of this blog that certain timelines are a little off, but I’m pretty sure when I was in high school, I bought Rid of Me and Is This Desire? on the same week, new and used, respectively. I lived just down the street from a Wherehouse (R.I.P.) and picked up so many used CDs there, including Gang of Four’s Entertainment! when it was reissued on Henry Rollins’ short-lived Infinite Zero label. But I’m getting way off track here.
PJ Harvey released this both after To Bring You My Love and after her relationship with Nick Cave ended, so there’s a dark and romantic sensibility to it, ostensibly her goth record. Certain moments are essentially industrial, like the noisy “Joy” and the clanking “My Beautiful Leah.” And the lead single, “A Perfect Day Elise,” definitely has a guitar in it that’s slightly out of tune (and it sounds really cool as a result). But I’ve described this in the past as “Goth ASMR” because of songs like “The Wind,” which finds Harvey whispering, and the eerily quiet “Electric Light,” both of which give that weird endorphin sensation. Soothing, yet unsettling. An aesthetic I can’t really get enough of.
Neither of which is necessarily the single reason why I love this album, but they’re certainly part of it. But there are also some of the best songs Harvey’s ever written, including the tense, gothic “The Garden,” and the haunting and beautiful “The River,” each of which juxtaposes elegant flourishes of piano against a dark undercurrent of menace, and they’re basically masterpieces. For all of these reasons and more, it’s one of my favorite records to listen to in the fall, when everything feels a little bit ghostly and there’s an eerie chill in the air. Those kinds of records in general are the best, but this one’s even better.
Rating: 9.6
Sound Quality: Great
Rolling Stones – Beggars Banquet
The first Rolling Stones album I ever bought on CD was Beggars Banquet, for what was probably no more than $8 at Circuit City—that was sort of my go-to bargain spot for picking up classics on the cheap, and I also got Stevie Wonder, Lou Reed and Led Zeppelin discs for $10 or less. As far as I know you can’t actually set foot inside a Circuit City retail store anymore, though the company does still exist as a brand. Regardless, as a teenager stocking up on all the essentials, it was kind of amazing.
Anyone who’s been following this blog for a while should know that it absolutely isn’t my first Stones vinyl (though I don’t expect anyone to remember what that was—it’s Aftermath, for what it’s worth). But I have a particular soft spot for this album because it was my gateway, initially bought because of “Sympathy for the Devil” (still, absolutely, a top-tier Stones song) but treasured for songs like “No Expectations,” “Street Fighting Man” and “Jigsaw Puzzle.” It also has a few head scratchers, like Mick apparently trying to sound like a woman on “Dear Doctor” or inviting a teenager to a threesome in “Stray Cat Blues” (late-’60s to early ’70s Stones had both their best songs and some of their most WTF lyrical choices). To some degree you expect the sleaze, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it ages well (although the dirty groove of “Stray Cat” still knocks.)
From 1966 to the late ’70s, the Stones were also playing with different styles and influences a lot, too, from psychedelia to rhythm and blues to more traditional blues to disco. This one has a lot of folk influences, specifically American/Appalachian folk as opposed to English folk, which you’d hear on Led Zeppelin’s III. That sets this one apart from just about any other Stones album, and its homespun looseness is pretty charming, even if in terms of the actual tracklist it’s a little all over the place, but somehow it still works. As a final note, I don’t have the cover version with the toilet, which was censored in certain markets, much like the Mamas and the Papas record where they’re all in a bathtub. I’m reminded of the Krusty the Klown joke where he says he was banned from TV in the ’50s because you weren’t allowed to say “pants.”
Rating: 9.5
Sound Quality: Great
A Certain Ratio – ACR Loco
This one was a freebie from the label, and it’s a fun one. A Certain Ratio came up in the early days of Factory Records in Manchester along with bands like Joy Division (who I wrote about over at Treble this week!) and at first they had a similarly dark post-punk aesthetic, but pretty quickly they veered into more of a funk sound. Their name isn’t mentioned as often as it should be in any discussion of dancepunk and their influence on all that was happening with cowbells and hi-hats in the early ’00s, but so it goes.
ACR Loco can be understood as a “comeback” of sorts, though they had several periods of re-emerging after a long absence, but this one seemed to stick, since they have a new album that just came out this past month. But this is a pretty strong return, full of high-energy grooves, influences from samba and Afrobeat and house and techno. The arrangements are bigger, there are background vocalists, it’s all a pretty strong production. It perhaps comes up short in terms of there being a classic song on the level of “Do the Du” or “Flight,” but that’s the risk with setting the bar high early on. All the same, this one grooves.
Rating: 8.6
Sound Quality: Great
1000 Times Jeff 
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