PJ HARVEY - I Inside The Old Year Dying LP

Gatefold sleeve.

The forest has always surrounded the music of PJ Harvey. Even her rawest, grungiest record, Rid of Me, had an earthy presence at its center, like a vengeful dryad locked in a dank basement; her glossiest, Stories from the City..., alternates between the modern pleasures of city life (Sex! Alcohol! Polished production!) and a numb sense of alienation from a natural way of being that those pleasures can never quite keep at bay. With every subsequent album, the trees grew closer and closer, branches beckoning; now, she has run out to join them, and if we look carefully through the thickets, we may see the glow of the hearth in her new bramble-shrouded home.