While Harvey's inaugural Peel session is considered one of the series' best, possibly because it captures her before she'd even put out Dry, the four performances she selected from it feel a bit redundant because they are all songs from that debut that do not differ significantly from the recorded versions aside from Steve Vaughan's extra wiry, extra distorted bass sound. They're all great songs performed well, but The Peel Sessions really gains value when PJ Harvey works through less familiar material or less familiar arrangements, which is what she does for the remainder of the disc. "Naked Cousin", a Rid of Me outtake that finally found a home in 1996 on the Crow: City of Angels soundtrack, is flat-out awesome--as devastating a song and performance as any on Rid of Me. I've loved her take on Willie Dixon's "Wang Dang Doodle" ever since I heard her do it totally solo on 120 Minutes in '93, and the full-band version here is considerably wilder. Her and John Parish's voice/guitars reading of "Snake" contains a vocal even more uncontainable than the one on Rid of Me. A completely fuzzed-out version of the Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea bonus track "This Wicked Tongue" sounds like a return to Rid of Me's lo-fi aesthetics in the days when PJ had polished up her sound on disc considerably. Her voice and guitar reading of "You Come Through" from the tribute session is much more intense than the airily atmospheric version on Uh-Huh Her.
That back two-thirds of The Peel Sessions renders the disc nearly as essential as PJ Harvey's proper albums, so it's very conscientious of Island/UMe to include it in its current PJH vinyl reissue campaign. It sounds just as full-bodied as the other LPs in this campaign.
