Dry was the debut album by PJ Harvey, released in 1992 on Too Pure Records in the UK, and later that same year by Indigo in the US.
I know a lot of people love all phases of PJ Harvey’s career, and that the critical consensus is that she’s been great through all of her different incarnations as an artist. I’m probably exposing my rockist streak here, but for me, nothing she’s done has ever equalled the first two albums, back when “PJ Harvey” was considered a band and not just a person, when Polly herself was the singer and guitarist for a trio featuring Robert Ellis on drums and backing vocals, and Steve Vaughan on bass. When those records were coming out, I was really into what PJ Harvey was doing. Seeing the video for “Big Fish,” from To Bring You My Love, on “120 Minutes” was enough to put me off of Polly Jean for quite a while, and even though I liked what I heard of some of her later albums (especially Uh Huh Her, which reunited her with Ellis and the more rocknroll sound she’d had in the early days, but was considered by most critics to be a low point in her career—go figure), it was just never the same for me. Dry and Rid Of Me are the shit, if you ask me, and while I’d love to see her get back to that level of creative awesomeness again, I don’t actually expect it to happen. There you go; that’s my controversial critical statement for the week. Hope I haven’t ruffled too many feathers.
