Rolling Stone's Women in Rock: The Nineties
Source: Rolling Stone Issue No.773

...Turning our attention back to the U.K. - whoa! What new strain of rock & roll DNA has spun out Polly Jean Harvey? There she is, stomping across the stage in trousers and a dour, don't-mess'with-me mien. This diminutive Brit with the sensibilities and lung capacity of a Willie Dixon is perhaps the decade's most exhilarating anomaly. Appearing as PJ Harvey (her and a two-man rhythm section), she shows the same reverence for American blues that animates an Eric Clapton or Keith Richards. Her mother, a sculptor, organized blues shows, and little Polly played beneath the very adult noise of Robert Johnson and Howlin' Wolf. But Harvey's is not a slavish fealty; she takes the passion from the form and dresses it in her own concerns in songs like "Long Snake Moan."

Like so many British rockers of legend, Harvey went to art school, and in 1992 she released a small album, Dry, on an independent label. Bluesy and hardcore rocking and vulnerable, it shrieks into a room like a dense meteor of Catharsis. The critical hosannas and resultant industry hoo-ha nearly shut her down. Harvey wisely opted for rest and retreat, and returned with the roaring Rid of Me, all sex and arson. Like many of those blues-loving male Brits, Harvey has proved herself an able poet of myth and menace. Her sexual landscapes are both dreamily familiar and scary as hell, making her, at 29, a masterful erotic impressionist. Onstage, her persona has been breathtakingly mercurial, from rad guitar jockey to red-lipped wraith in a cocktail dress. Like the best pop shamans, she conjures the irresistible need to know, What's she gonna do next? ...

High Notes: A selective discography of some of the most influential female records.

PJ Harvey, Dry
Polly Jean Harvey's debut, Dry, introduced a startingly fresh approach from a small-town British lass: scrunchy blues sung with a voice that alternated from sultry and lusty to bruised and beseeching, punctuated by Harvey's versatile guitar work. By synthesizing a half-century of women's POVs and sonic approaches - from Bessie Smith to Patti Smith - PJ Harvey created a unique and powerful female-drenched vision. (1992, Indigo/Too Pure/Island)