Still Dark, Still Great

Genius isn't a word used very often in rock criticism because, frankly, the supporting evidence rarely looks good in print. For instance, the highlight of PJ Harvey's genius new album is the moment when she growls, "Aaaaah, aaaah, ahhahhh, aaaah, aarrrgghh/Whooooorrr, whooooorrrr." And the title of that particularly brilliant song is Who the F__? I'll stop now.

Yet, printed evidence aside, there's no doubt Polly Jean Harvey deserves the G word somewhere near her name. Over the course of seven albums, she has never written a bad song. Not one. That would be an amazing streak for a commercial hitmaker, but it's even more impressive given that nearly every Harvey composition flirts with sonic disaster. On Uh Huh Her, out on June 8, she continues to favor jagged countermelodies, bass lines heavier than wet wool and tales of sexual obsession told in a voice that swings from whispered innocence to bunny-boiling, caterwauling madness. It is not dinner-party music — unless you're dining with someone you would like to kill. Or sleep with. Or both.

Harvey has mined this territory before, but who cares? Love is a pretty expansive purlieu after all, and she's chasing anger, hate and lust too. Her lyrics aspire to poetry and sometimes get there--"It turns me on to imagine/Your blue eyes on my words" she says on The Letter — but it's her voice that does the heavy lifting. On Cat on the Wall and The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth, she howls simple phrases until they sound a little like sex and a little like pain. On The Slow Drug, her hush leads into the dead of night as she contemplates a sleeping lover and wonders, "Could you be my calling?" No singer since Janis Joplin has moved as easily between primal scream and intimate sigh.

There are smoldering riffs on Uh Huh Her, but Harvey — who played almost every instrument on the album — wisely lets her voice dominate. The album's most hypnotic track, The Desperate Kingdom of Love, is just a slow acoustic guitar and Harvey begging her man to "Put on your spurs, swagger around/In the desperate kingdom of love." In the space of 2 min. 40 sec., she re-creates the whole ecstatic misery of obsession. It's the kind of thing Johnny Cash could have pulled off. Maybe. And wasn't he a genius?