In 1992, Polly Jean Harvey punctured the grunge lethargy like a switchblade through a dingy flannel. Harvey neutered most of her guitar-wielding peers with legit rage and a harrowingly expressive voice weaned on Siouxsie Sioux and Captain Beefheart. That voice and her filthy guitar work led the eponymous trio PJ Harvey (Steve Vaughn: bass; Rob Ellis: drums) through eleven bluesy blades on their debut Dry.
The album is so unhinged, so genuinely scary that it can be easy to lose sight of how good songs such as “O Stella”, “Oh My Lover”, and “Water” are (stand outs like “Dress”, “Happy & Bleeding”, “Victory”, and the sublime “Sheela-Na-Gig” are tougher to mask). The 11 demos included on a limited, double-disc edition of Dry on the Too Pure label brought Harvey’s skills into perfect focus, revealing the traditional craft, even prettiness of songs that would be nothing short of monstrous on Dry. Although demo discs tend to be historically interesting yet ultimately disposable, Dry Demos actually enhances the proper album while also being a unique and rewarding listen on its own merits.
So it’s great that the Dry - Demos are being reissued on vinyl along with Dry. Both LPs in this first wave sound excellent with the spare arrangements of Dry Demos (mostly just Harvey’s guitars and voice, though there is the occasional cello or guest singer) at their most crystalline and the booming ones of Dry at their mightiest. Bass depth is extraordinary. Dry - Demos also includes a download card, though Dry does not.
As startling an opening salvo as Dry is, Polly Jean Harvey’s work would just get better and better from there as she sharpened her songwriting with 1993’ s Rid of Me and expanded her sound into unexpected places with the more refined and orchestrated blues-rock of To Bring You My Love, the moody electronic rhythms of Is This Desire?, and the ghostly folk of White Chalk (my personal pick for Harvey’s masterpiece). If the vinyl reissues of these discs are as good as Dry and Dry - Demos, this could turn out to be the best vinyl reissue campaign of 2020.
As startling an opening salvo as Dry is, Polly Jean Harvey’s work would just get better and better from there as she sharpened her songwriting with 1993’ s Rid of Me and expanded her sound into unexpected places with the more refined and orchestrated blues-rock of To Bring You My Love, the moody electronic rhythms of Is This Desire?, and the ghostly folk of White Chalk (my personal pick for Harvey’s masterpiece). If the vinyl reissues of these discs are as good as Dry and Dry - Demos, this could turn out to be the best vinyl reissue campaign of 2020.
