The 1990s in 10 Albums: To Bring You My Love (1995)
Is my voodoo working?
A strange decade for women in music, the 1990s often gets remembered, in this regard, for Lillith Fair and perhaps, at the other extreme, riot grrl. Yet right down the middle of these extremes were female acts who, in truth, have probably left the biggest impact and influence, and in many cases, are still going strong, not least by — unlike some other entries in this series — being ever-changing.
For Polly Jean Harvey, having to shift around was a necessity from the off. Having put herself forward as a potential vocalist for Slint, only to find they’d split up, she formed her own band — except this lasted for two albums before it split up.
And so, by the time To Bring You My Love arrived, she’d already had to twist and turn. From here, it was likely (compared to other acts) a trivial matter to twist and turn again, going electronic for Is This Desire? (1998) and taking the shinier, radio-friendly route for Stories from the City, Stories from the City (2000), and ever onwards from there.
To Bring You My Love is nonetheless perhaps the archetypal PJ Harvey album. It is feminine throughout, but this neither excludes aggression (“Long Snake Moan”) or vulnerability (“I Think I’m a Mother”). If there’s a feminist thesis at the heart of this album, it’s about how female power gets turned in on itself, through societal norms and religious piety (e.g. “Down by the Water”).
Musically, the album splits off into pairs; a religious, but not quite gospel paean, bookends the album (“To Bring You My Love”, “The Dancer”); two sinister pieces, complete with growling basslines, sit on each half (“Meet ze Monsta”, “Down by the Water”); two quietened pieces, muffled and lo-fi as the studio is lined with snow (“Working for the Man”, “I Think I’m a Mother”); two opposites (“Teclo” and “Long Snake Moan”), and two heavy acoustic strumfests (“C’mon Billy”, “Send His Love to Me”).
Despite this diversity, though, all these songs are of a piece. Fuzz and distortion contrast hard with cleaner tones, in particular, vocals, which have utter clarity except in three cases. In two, it’s the muffled, lo-fi pieces mentioned earlier, but in the last case, it’s “Long Snake Moan”, the most sexually suggestive track on the album; in other words, the track’s sex-positivity, taken as a given, is dimly perceivable, but not existent. In this and other respects, thematically and musically, To Bring You My Love reflects a half-complete overhaul of gender relations — we in Western society don’t exist in the 19th Century, when women could effectively be imprisoned by their own husbands, but it’d be wrong to claim we live in truly feminist society either.
Musically, too, there is — as there has often been in PJ Harvey’s work — a vast sense of space. In this case, it’s a long way from the claustrophobic, echoless and aptly named Dry (1992). This is the vast expanse of the deserts of Nevada and Arizona, where the twanging of a guitar in the intros evokes the image of a sedan barrelling along an empty highway, inching across the frame of a wide, wide shot despite leaving all speed limits long behind. Harvey would move on; in Is This Desire?, to a sort of Emily Bronte-Daphne du Maurier country rendered in drum loops and synthesisers; in Stories… to both Dorset and New York. From there, the Americana would generally disappear for the next 15 years, until The Hope Six Demolition Project (2015).
No-one who’s listened to “Rid of Me”, or even “Sheela-na-Gig”, could have accused PJ Harvey of lacking confidence beforehand. To Bring You My Love, however, suggested a quieter, more solid certainty; it suggested she could operate at a broader range than the previous two albums suggested. PJ Harvey the band might’ve flamed out by century’s end; PJ Harvey the individual proved much more durable.
