I have not heard anything Polly Jean Harvey has recorded since Stories From The City ten years ago which (unlike many other sympathetic listeners) bored me silly. But I have never once thought I was “all done” with her, nor do I think I ever will be. It was once said about Richard Rodgers that he “just pissed music,” and Harvey is one of the only people in contemporary art of any kind to give me a similar impression. Nothing epitomizes that sense like the closer to her second album from 1993, the entirety of which is terrific, but “Ecstasy” - probably the simplest song on the album - is an uncanny masterstroke. Based on a riff she probably came up with the very first time she ever tried to play slide (the recorded take might well be the second time), she just lights into a humongous groaning maelstrom, and then traces her own melodic path over the top of it, and in and around it, with a voice that never overloads, never goes past its limits, but pulses and penetrates, leaving no doubt of the intuitive rightness of Harvey’s vocal contour at each turn. You and she will meet again.
Note: 25 secular essays (each one exactly 200 words long) about 25 songs, originally intended to appear one per day during Advent (or so) from Dec. 1 through Dec. 25, now extended to Twelfth Night (or so).
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