Is This Desire?

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The year was 1998 and the era of the angst-ridden artist was coming to a natural conclusion. Grunge was long dead, Radiohead had just changed the face of mainstream music in a way no band really had before and that left PJ Harvey in a strange position. She had made a name for herself in the early 90s as foolhardy lyricist on albums such as Rid Of Me (when “PJ Harvey” was a band) and it was clear that if she kept that image up she would end up becoming just another forgotten artist of the time. It could be argued that Polly began her transition on To Bring You My Love but Is This Desire is where her transformation truly began from a headstrong, no nonsense lover to meditative and contemplative songwriter. However, recording Is This Desire? was another fraught process. Harvey and her production collaborators, Flood and Head, did the first recording sessions in 1997, and then walked away from the music. “I chose to just leave it for a while,” she said in an interview disc accompanying the album. “I was doing a lot of emotional work at that time, and I just needed a break from everything. I just wanted to stop and start looking at my life as Polly, rather than my life as a songwriter-performer.”

John Parish reflected on the album's recording in 2021: "[Is This Desire?] is probably the most compromised album that Polly's made, largely to do with the time over which it was made ... There were two long recordings sessions and almost a year's gap between them. The bulk of the first session took place in a small studio in Yeovil, so it was much more Heath Robinson setup, and the second session, most or all of it took place in a huge expensive London studio, so there were differences in the technical capabilities of the studio, but the same musicians basically in both sessions and same producers and engineers. It’s very difficult to sustain the identity of a record like that. It was also the only record where the record company came in and had a degree of creative input, which had never been sanctioned on any of the other records, certainly none of the other records I was involved with. The record company often never heard anything until they got the mastered album! ... on this album there were a couple of people who I felt took advantage of the fact Polly wasn't very well at that time. Normally she's so decisive and strong about what she feels, about what's going to happen, but on that record she wavered in the middle." [5] There is a compelling argument that Let England Shake is Harvey’s masterpiece: its richness and breadth are clear here, an implausibly pretty, echo-drenched song about rioting cities and drowning in sewage, bolstered by a sample from Niney the Observer’s 1970 reggae hit Blood and Fire. 5. Sheela Na Gig (1992)Harvey was at pains to suggest that Stories From the City … was not her “New York album”. For all its geographical references to Manhattan, You Said Something sounds weirdly British – there is a distinctly folky lilt to the guitars – making it the perfect summation of the album’s Englishwoman-abroad theme. 22. A Perfect Day Elise (1998) Is This Desire? is pure beauty in every sense of the word. It gives me the goosebumps because we've all asked ourselves the same question or felt the same way, at some point in time. There's something seriously haunting about PJ's voice here too (the high and low notes, the way she grinds down on some verses) and the melodramatic undertoned music that harmonizes the song in such a magnificent and scenic way. The way it builds up, the whole story unraveling, the climax, giving into desire and lust...it's a piece of brilliance that a lot of people will just disregard as another song, but if they took the time to appreciate every word and guitar chord, I've no doubt it will shake them too. The song "The Wind" was inspired by Saint Catherine, and in particular St Catherine's Chapel, Abbotsbury. [6] [7] In retrospect, it seems faintly amazing that To Bring You My Love was a commercial breakthrough: admittedly less confrontational than Rid of Me, it was still deeply uneasy listening, as evidenced by The Dancer, a stunning exercise in trembling tension, filled with dark religious imagery and references to opera. A love song, no less. 23. You Said Something (2000)

Released on September 28, 1998, Is This Desire? didn’t quite reach the chart peaks of To Bring You My Love in most countries. However, commercial success was somewhat beside the point: The album obliterated expectations and found Harvey wresting control of her own narrative. Is This Desire? represents the culmination of her carving out time for self-care, emotional growth, and intense reflection — and channeling this into the lyrics. “I wanted to write for myself, about myself. Like someone looking in on me,” she explained to The Observer in 1999.

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Harvey spoke about the making of the album in an interview with Filter magazine in 2004, indicating it was the project of which, to date, she was proudest. "Again working with Flood, again trying to find new ground, but a particularly difficult time in my life. So, it was a very, very difficult, difficult record to make and still one I find very difficult to listen to, but probably my favorite record that I've made because it had a lot of guts. I mean, I was making extremely difficult music, experimenting with techniques I hadn't used before and not really caring what other people thought about it. I'm quite proud of that one." She also told The Telegraph, "I do think Is This Desire? is the best record I ever made—maybe ever will make—and I feel that that was probably the highlight of my career. I gave 100 per cent of myself to that record. Maybe that was detrimental to my health at the same time."

I was doing a lot of emotional work [when she began studio sessions in 1997],” she shared on an interview disc that accompanied Desire. Her self-reflection reached the point where she had to abandon the sessions for a while: “I just wanted to stop, and start looking at my life as Polly, rather than my life as a songwriter.” By the time recording resumed in spring 1998, she’d devised a way to convey “life as Polly” without the danger of completely exposing herself. Never big on lyrical explication, Harvey has always complained that people tend to project her personal life on to songs that she approaches like a short story writer, something evident from Send His Love to Me’s saga of an abandoned wife going slowly nuts in her remote desert home. 40. The Wind (1998) dawn is also said in, "electric light," but it's ambiguous as to whether dawn is a girl or a time of day. Broken Homes” is pure, midnight-blue trip-hop, and a touch of that genre made its way onto Is This Desire?, most notably on the dreamy, Portishead-inspired “Electric Light.” Also dreamy in their own way are “The Wind” and “Catherine,” written as a pair to honor the martyred St. Catherine of Alexandria, the patron saint of unmarried women. A 14th century chapel in her name still stands on a hill in Dorset, near Harvey’s birthplace, and the whispering loneliness of “The Wind” precisely captures the chapel’s isolation, and the torment of Catherine’s thoughts as she awaits execution by the emperor Maxentius (“She dreamt of children’s voices/And torture on the wheel”). “Catherine,” meanwhile, is set to a percussive pulse that sounds like a languidly beating heart. the name joe(seph) is mentioned in the album in previous songs; those songs being, "the garden," and "perfect day, elise."As ferocious screw-you statements of unbiddable artistic independence go, Harvey’s major label debut takes some beating. Which brings us to Rub Til It Bleeds: five crawling, anxiety-inducing minutes during which Harvey offers to – and let us not mince words here – wank someone off so violently she draws blood. See you on Top of the Pops! 19. Reeling (1993) This Mess We’re In is a fabulous song – beautifully muted, the music evokes dusk settling on a city – but even if it wasn’t, it would make it on to this list by dint of requiring guest vocalist Thom Yorke to sing the line “Night and day I dream of makin’ love to you now, baby”. 41 Send His Love to Me (1995) Vowell, Sarah (November 1998). "PJ Harvey: Is This Desire?". Spin. 14 (11): 138 . Retrieved 21 October 2011. Harris, John (27 September 2007). "Songs of innocence and experience". The Guardian. Film & Music p. 10 . Retrieved 19 March 2009. Posted on 28 September 2007. Perhaps because she didn’t shy away from anger or sexuality — and was a young woman expressing anger, at that — her persona was scrutinized more closely. “On the first couple of albums, I was finding a voice for the first time to say an awful lot of stuff that was stored up inside me,” Harvey told The Times in 1999. “I was very young and confused, so yes, those early albums are very angry. I was exploring that and finding a way to express it, and thought there is joy and a vibrant energy there, too. But you get categorized and it becomes rigid, and it doesn’t allow you space to develop and grow.”

Is This Desire? is particularly moving when it articulates how complicated desire affects women. The protagonist of “A Perfect Day Elise” witnesses the suicide of a beloved; “Catherine” is from the point of view of someone spurned by (and deeply jealous of) the titular character; “Joy” is consumed by “her own innocence” and feels so hopeless she’d rather go blind than remain in her current state.

both of them, however, are brought to the same questions of desire and it's significance. joe and dawn seem to wonder if the liason was worth the changes that would come as a result. joe wonders if all the suffering that he bears after he sleeps with another is worth the pleasure. perhaps it was bad sex, to put it bluntly, that makes them doubt the expirience. they expected pleasure, and may have been let down. or, perhaps they were looking for some sort of uplifting power in their union, and found nothing. either way, they're doubting themselves, the act itself, and each other. a b Sheffield, Rob (15 October 1998). "Is This Desire?". Rolling Stone. No.797. Archived from the original on 12 November 2007 . Retrieved 28 June 2004. One of the most important elements of this personal growth was Harvey deciding to be kinder to herself. “You come to a point where you have to allow yourself to like yourself a bit more,” she told The Times. “I used to feel I didn’t deserve it. That was always seeing the negative again. Now I have learned to say it’s all right to like yourself.” As for how she was able to get to this point, she cited age (“One develops a much larger perspective on life”) but also life’s vicissitudes. “There has been a lot of death around me, people I know. But there have been quite a few births around, too — friends of mine having children. That broadens your horizons. It has allowed me to see what is worth worrying about and what isn’t.”