P.J. Harvey: Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea (Island)
No longer the skeletal goth waif of yore, Polly Harvey seems to have sorted out a few demons since her last album, Is This Love? Luckily, she's got plenty more demons on standby, and she charges at them full-on in Big Exit, Good Fortune and Kamikaze. With some tracks recorded in the rural setting of Dorset, and others in the bustle of New York city, Stories . . . balances the angry punk energy of Dry with the edgy reflectiveness of Is This Love?, and comes up with some fine songs in the process. Harvey is still unashamedly in thrall to the trashy rock'n'roll of Patti Smith, and she's also an avowed acolyte of religious imagery, but a more down-to-earth Harvey emerges A Place Called Home, Beautiful Feeling and We Float. Thom Yorke duets with Polly on This Mess We're In; he sounds lost, she sounds decisive.
Finley Quaye: Vanguard (Epic)
The Quaye fella is back with the follow-up to Maverick A Strike, but be warned that Finley is not feeling too chilled out these days. Anyone expecting the sunny, subBob Marley reggae of his debut may find Vanguard a little tuff to take. This album reflects the downside of the stoner life, with its stabs of paranoia, bawls of electronic confusion and chattering streams of self-consciousness. Recent single, Spiritualized, is a strangely earthbound rocker which - despite its straightforward structure - has no sense of direction. Songs like Broadcast, Everybody Knows and Chad Valley, however, are solid slices of demented dub, a weird 'n' wired new strain of UK reggae. Vanguard veers dangerously close to being Quaye's own Neither Fish Nor Flesh. . . , but avoids the fate of Terence Trent D'Arby's folly by being firmly in control of the madness.
