Released: 1995
P J Harvey had already released three albums when this was released. The first album, "Dry", had a lo-fi alt-rock sound and was very erratic; her second album, "Rid of Me", expanded her sound and was better; her third album, "4-Track Demos" consisted of, you guessed it, 4-track demos, mainly of songs from "Rid of Me", and was actually pretty good.
For this album, the sound was expanded further, from grungy rockers ('Long Snake Moan') to Spanish-sounding jingle-jangle ('C'mon Billy'), and a hell of a lot inbetween.
Despite being all over the rock map, this album is consistently good from beginning to end, and holds together really well, despite the constant changes of pace and sound; there really isn't an dull or uninteresting song here.
The absolute best songs are 'Meet Ze Monsta', 'C'mon Billy', 'Long Snake Moan' and 'Down By The Water'; considering this album only contains ten songs, and I can instantly list five of them as brilliant says something about the quality here.
In my opinion, this is still one of the best albums of the 1990s, let alone the Britpop era, and still sounds great today, and hasn't aged at all. This is still the best album P J Harvey has made in a very good career, I think, though that's not to say anything bad about her albums that came after this. This is really an essential purchase for any rock music fan.
I actually bought this album in France in the summer of 1995, and my CD claims to be an "edition limitée", though as far as I can tell, the only extra thing in it is a second booklet inside the CD containing a massive 6 pictures (by Valérie Phillips).
Rating: 5/5
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