W A N D E R E R E R

Whatever commercial success PJ Harvey had in America was a glorious fluke; it’s not like she became anything other than a cult star even after “Down By The Water” went into medium rotation. But this was a time when cult stars threatened to become mass crossover stars, and Harvey was the greatest cult star that we had in 1995. Harvey was already a critical favorite in 1995. Her first two albums, 1992’s Dry and 1993’s Rid Of Me, had yielded one song apiece (“Sheela Na Gig” and “50 Foot Queenie,” respectively) that would get a bit of radio play in late nights. (I know this because I taped both of them off the radio, which was what cash-strapped kids did to obtain music in the pre-downloading era.) More importantly, she’d matured at a frightening rate, going from fully-formed lost-in-obsession howler on Dry to avenging spartan male-ego destroyer on Rid Of Me.

Even taking that into account, though, the leap she took from Rid Of Me to To Bring You My Love (which came out 20 years ago tomorrow) remains staggering. Harvey’s original power trio had broken up just after the punishing Rid Of Me sessions, and she reacted by altering her whole sound, persona, and approach. Harvey wasn’t the leader of a band anymore on To Bring You My Love. She was something else. She was Patti Smith pretending to be Jessica Rabbit. She was Captain Beefheart fronting Violator-era Depeche Mode. She was Glenn Danzig reincarnated as a film-noir femme fatale. We’d never seen anything like her before, and we never will again…