Album: To Bring You My Love
Year: 1995
. . .
Occasionally, two seemingly irreconcilable things can be true at the same time: I can recognize that an artist is a true and utter original, and that everything they release is worth my time, but I don’t always love everything they do.
And so it is with Polly Jean Harvey, who has released a couple records that I well and truly adore, while remaining indifferent to much of the rest of her catalog.
So while I bought Dry, Rid of Me and even 4-Track Demos in a desperate attempt to understand what was blowing so many people away, none of them hit me in the same way they hit those of you who are shaking your heads at me right now.
So the first time I truly got PJ Harvey was on 1995’s To Bring You My Love, which often traded her harsh guitar for weird keyboards and percussion, and somehow landed as postmodern blues, especially on the lead single “Down By The Water,” in which she sings about drowning her daughter over a fuzzed-out organ that coulda been stolen from the back alleys of “Sister Ray.”
I lost my heart
Under the bridge
To that little girl
So much to me
And now I’m old
And now I holler
She’ll never know
Just what I found
As “Down By The Water” progresses, that organ is joined by shakers, finger snaps, strings — even call-and-response vocals — but nothing even remotely resembling any kind of big drum beat. Dark and spooky is the vibe her, and even the semblance of a backbeat would fuck up that mood, especially at the coda, where she sang, totally and utterly broken with regret:
Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water
Come back here, man, gimme my daughter
Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water
Come back here, man, gimme my daughter
Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water
Come back here, man, gimme my daughter
Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water
Come back here, man, gimme my daughter
Somehow, this totally weird and fucked-up song became a pretty big radio hit here in the U.S., and I’m convinced that hearing it a lot on San Francisco’s modern rock station, Live 105, was what drove it into my head and for all.
“Down By The Water” official video
“Down By The Water”
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