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Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed albums.
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
Universal acclaim
Based on 23 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 29 votes
Read user comments
Rate this album >
Album Info
Label: Island
Release Date: 24 October 2000
Discs: 1 disc
Genre(s): Rock, Alternative
Summary
PJ Harvey's fifth, and possibly best, album sees her venturing away from the electronic experimentation of 1998's 'Is This Desire?' and returning to the purer rock sound prevalent on her early releases. Radiohead's Thom Yorke guests on the duet "This Mess We're In." Winner of the 2001 Mercury Music Prize.
Also By This Artist: The Peel Sessions 1991-2004 Uh Huh Her White Chalk
Also On The Web: Mercury Music Prize site
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Ink Blot Magazine
Chiming, richly textured and potently rhythmic, this is starkly, explicitly rock n' roll, and the back-to-basics approach beautifully frames Polly's tales of fear, love, sex, sadness, ugliness, and beauty.
Read Full Review >Village Voice (Consumer Guide)
If Nirvana and Robert Johnson are rock's essence for you, so's To Bring You My Love. But if you believe the Beatles and George Clinton had more to say in the end, this could be the first PJ album you adore as well as admire.
Read Full Review >Mojo
Stories is a leaner, less experimental-sounding record than 1998's Is This Desire, its chips stacked on visceral power and vitalising vocals.
Read Full Review >New Musical Express
PJ Harvey's best album since 1991's 'Dry', a return to the feral intensity of that remarkable debut.... The clarity of the electric guitars played by Harvey, Rob Ellis and Mick Harvey is enough to make you fall in love with elemental rock all over again.... You could quibble Harvey has absolved her responsibilities by making an album earthed in the New York sound of 20 or 30 years ago. But when rock is so invigorating, so joyous about love, sex and living, all arguments are null and void.
Read Full Review >Armchair DJ
This back-to-basics approach gives dynamic focus to Harvey's lyrics, which tantalize with their taut, elliptical precision.
Read Full Review >L.A. Weekly
A beautiful album that even non-Harvey fans might relate to, Stories is an undeniable, unrelenting triumph.
Read Full Review >CDNow
The aptly titled Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea plays like an almanac of her adventures of the past few years, and reflects a newfound sense of self. Her songs once again reek of sexuality -- sometimes frustrated, sometimes satisfied -- resulting in alternating episodes of blistering, trashy, gutter guitar rock, and keyboard ballads of sheer melodic grace. She also reveals a greater command of her vocal abilities (with all the shrieks now in just the right places), and inspired new lyrical dashes.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club)
The album drags a bit near the end, but there's not a bad song on it, bursting out of the gate with the instant classic "Big Exit" before stringing together a bevy of strong material. But Stories From The City doesn't fully reveal itself as a classic until its astonishing midsection, particularly the rip-roaring "Whores Hustle And The Hustlers Whore" and the breathtaking "This Mess We're In." The former is one of the most bracing, thrilling songs of Harvey's career, and it's followed immediately by the latter, a gorgeous duet with Radiohead's Thom Yorke.
Read Full Review >The Wire
Given her capacity to align reinvention with a developing maturity, the 13 lucky songs of Stories deliver a complex text. It is certainly less frenetic, as if Harvey is finding new ways to exert her presence. In addition, its thoughtful spaces and pauses suggest room for doubt and manoeuvre. [#202, p.49]
Wall of Sound
Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea has to rank as a work more musically accessible than her early material and more emotionally direct than her later stuff. It's an intriguing song cycle that stands up to -- and in fact, demands -- repeated listenings.
Read Full Review >Rolling Stone
The happiest-sounding album she's ever made.... it may also be the best. While her austere sonic signature remains, the vocals are discernibly more relaxed, the tunes welcoming and even expansive.
Read Full Review >Sonicnet
She has always been a good songwriter -- experimental, dynamic, probing -- but here she demonstrates that she has the potential to be a truly masterful one. With newfound clarity and restraint, and with her usual wit, she examines the ways in which we try to convince ourselves that we are safe in an unsafe world.
Read Full Review >Q Magazine
The swampy exotica that was draped around both 1995's To Bring You My Love and '98's Is This Desire? has been forgotten: as proved by the likes of Big Exit and the pleasingly frantic Kamikaze, the dominant sound is that of a three-piece garage band, fused with enough production panache to prove that Harvey remains an admirably intelligent auteur.
Read Full Review >All Music Guide
The allegories and metaphors of her previous work are replaced with direct, vulnerable lyrics, and the album's production polishes the songs instead of obscuring them in noise or studio tricks.
Read Full Review >HOB.com
The combination of bombastic musings and ethereal compositions is not simply a grab bag of past accomplishments, or a recycling of what works, but a record that yields a wholly different result: An easy sounding album, upbeat and surprisingly positive with not much forced.
Read Full Review >Spin
Harvey is the strange case for whom a return to straight guitar-bass-drums is risky--it might be mistaken for mere rock. But she has no mere in her. [12/2000, p.215]
Billboard
Harvey's first five discs were startlingly complete conceptions. "Stories From The City" shows the same genius -- only in fits and starts.
Read Full Review >Dot Music
This time around Polly's drama school project is playing a Rock Star, and therefore this must be a Rock Record. And from the opener 'Big Exit', a simplistic, effective stomper so swathed in echo that she seems to be singing from the bottom of a pit, to the raucous semi-bonus 'This Wicked Tongue', it's just that, a back to basics special.
Read Full Review >Village Voice
It embraces rock guitar again with the same gulping pleasure with which Harvey is for once embracing her man.
Read Full Review >Pitchfork
On her fifth solo release, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, she may be maturing, or more vulnerable, or more vulnerable to her maturity. But regardless, the sheen gets slicker and her music gets duller as the time passes.
Read Full Review >What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this album is 9.1 (out of 10) based on 29 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
James B. gave it a10:
Amazing! There's something new at every listen... can't say that about many CD's or artists. One for the ages!
Rob B gave it an8:
For me, this is her best record. It's probably the most accessible but for me that's part of its success. Her other work was too often art rock in the worst performance art sense but this record, channeling the best of that genre (i.e Pattis Smith) and adding real tunes, is a bit of a triumph. 8!
kurt gave it a9:
I always wonder if someone at pitchfork writes an obviously and extremely incorrect review, such as this one, if they fire the guy. I hope they do.
Perspicacious Critic gave it a9:
Dear Pitchfork: Regarding your review, I have just three words: wrong, wrong, wrong.
Scott M gave it a9:
Horses in My Dreams is utterly amazing.
matan gave it a9:
great album
Alberto M gave it a10:
Another demolishing excuse to love PJ Harvey...
