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Word: albums (lookup in dictionary) (lookup stats)
Dates: during 1990-1999
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Usage:

Fans sorrowed to see her retreat, but if she had to hide out, at least she hid in a studio. The fruits of these three years now arrive in a new album titled Is This Desire? Harvey clearly wishes both to restate to the world what she can do and, as the title implies, to interrogate where music has taken her so far, and where she might still be headed...

Author: By Nicholas K. Davis, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER | Title: Wings of 'Desire': PJ Harvey Plays for Power | 10/16/1998 | See Source »

...good news--the great, great news--is that Harvey is vocally and technically more proficient than ever, exploring new facets of her talent without diluting the haunted power or thrusting will that have always made her distinctive. The album does not distill any one mood as forcefully as To Bring You My Love did its carnality and despair, but as a project of introspection and self-testing, it requires that Harvey try all new vessels for her rich concoctions of favorite themes...

Author: By Nicholas K. Davis, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER | Title: Wings of 'Desire': PJ Harvey Plays for Power | 10/16/1998 | See Source »

...album opens with "Angelene," the dry testimony of a world-wise hooker who longs for a lover "two thousand miles away," a yawn of separation that "lays open like a road." The figures in Harvey's tales rarely have access to the lovers they want, but Is This Desire? lends the trope a new layer of richness. Surely we should not ignore that Angelene both scans and rhymes with Polly Jean, and that an album whose title is a question must necessarily begin as a quest. After all, it is not the lover (who may, in fact, be imaginary...

Author: By Nicholas K. Davis, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER | Title: Wings of 'Desire': PJ Harvey Plays for Power | 10/16/1998 | See Source »

...better, then, that Harvey follows it with "No Girl So Sweet," a blistering whirl of guitars and percussion that erupts into a signature banshee-howl, and finally concludes with the album's title track, which restates all of the questions with which she and the record embarked. "Is this desire?" she asks, then interjects "enough, enough!" as though over-whelmed by her own album's energy: Harvey needs space, in the end, to clear her thoughts and assess her position. Is desire an endpoint, or was it all along the process by which an invisible endpoint was sought--heartening...

Author: By Nicholas K. Davis, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER | Title: Wings of 'Desire': PJ Harvey Plays for Power | 10/16/1998 | See Source »

...body of the album, if "Angelene" may be taken as a prologue, is a sort of paganish Pilgrim's Progress, taken through marshes of despondency, moments of ecstasy, and often-recurring seas, pools, and rivers in which the singer pauses to gaze at her own reflection. Landscapes and climates are, appropriately, elemental to her experiences. A dervishy, barrelling cut called "The Sky Lit Up" describes a night with a lover in which times seems to freeze despite great activity: "Thinking of nothing, and the shooting stars/And this world tonight is mine/A world to be remembered...

Author: By Nicholas K. Davis, CRIMSON STAFF WRITER | Title: Wings of 'Desire': PJ Harvey Plays for Power | 10/16/1998 | See Source »

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