4. PJ HarveyStories From The City, Stories From The Sea
PJ’s another artist like Nina or Bowie, just constantly searching. I’ll buy anything she does, as each of her albums has such a strong concept or narrative. This is a record I come back to a lot. It’s such intelligent, inquisitive music, with a very strong aesthetic, but it’s also very schizophrenic. At one moment, you get a total fuck-you song then her voice changes into this soft, tender, lush thing, and you want to fuck her back! The duet with Thom Yorke [‘The Mess We’re In’] is one of my favourite things – to have these two voices together – to hear the way they connect. The album still sounds really contemporary too, even though it’s nearly 20-years-old. I was watching the video to ‘Good Fortune’ the other day, and it feels like it was made last week. It has this real Instagram filter feel to it. Polly’s always ahead of the game.
