Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea

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Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
File:Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea.jpg
Studio album by PJ Harvey
Released 23 October 2000
Recorded March–April 2000 at Great Linford Manor in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom
Genre Alternative rock[1]
Length 47:25
Label Island
Producer Rob Ellis, Mick Harvey, PJ Harvey
PJ Harvey chronology
Is This Desire?
(1998)Is This Desire?1998		 Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
(2000)		 Uh Huh Her
(2004)Uh Huh Her2004
Singles from Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea
  1. "Good Fortune"
    Released: 13 November 2000
  2. "A Place Called Home"
    Released: 26 February 2001
  3. "This Is Love"
    Released: 8 October 2001

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is the fifth studio album by English alternative rock musician PJ Harvey, released on 23 October 2000 by Island Records. Recorded during March to April 2000, it contains themes of love that are tied into Harvey's affection for New York City.[2]

The album became the second major commercial success of her recording career, following her successful breakthrough To Bring You My Love (1995). Upon its release, the album received acclaim from most music critics and earned Harvey several accolades, including the 2001 Mercury Prize. It spent 17 weeks on the UK Albums Chart, and was certified Platinum in the UK and Australia.[3][4] It is generally regarded as one of her best works.[5][6][7] In the updated version of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it was ranked at #431.[8]

Background

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea was recorded at the Great Linford Manor in Milton Keynes in March–April 2000. The record was co-produced by Mick Harvey, Rob Ellis and Harvey, and mixed by Victor Van Vugt at the Fallout Shelter. The album featured a duet with Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke on the track "This Mess We're In", as well as backing vocals and keyboards from Yorke on the songs "One Line" and "Beautiful Feeling". "This Mess We're In" was featured in the series finale of Queer as Folk, in the final love scene shared between the two main characters. The song was subsequently included on the series' fifth soundtrack.

Harvey told Q in 2001, "I wanted everything to sound as beautiful as possible. Having experimented with some dreadful sounds on Is This Desire? and To Bring You My Love - where I was really looking for dark, unsettling, nauseous-making sounds - Stories From The City... was the reaction. I thought, No, I want absolute beauty. I want this album to sing and fly and be full of reverb and lush layers of melody. I want it to be my beautiful, sumptuous, lovely piece of work." She did, however, concede jokingly that it was only "pop according to PJ Harvey, which is probably as un-pop as you can get according to most people's standards."[citation needed]

Reception

Professional ratings
Review scores
Source Rating
AllMusic 4/5 stars[9]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music 4/5 stars[10]
Entertainment Weekly A−[11]
Los Angeles Times 3.5/4 stars[12]
NME 9/10[13]
Pitchfork Media 5.5/10[14]
Q 4/5 stars[15]
Rolling Stone 4.5/5 stars[16]
Spin 8/10[17]
The Village Voice A+[6]

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea reached number 23 on the UK Albums Chart.[18] The album was certified Platinum in the UK, with sales over 300,000 copies. The album debuted at number 42 on the US Billboard 200 chart.[19] It has also been certified Gold in France, and has sold 1 million copies worldwide.

Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea received widespread acclaim from music critics. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 88, based on 25 reviews.[5] NME hailed it as "a magnificent, life-affirming opus" by Harvey.[13] Robert Christgau called it "the best album of her career" in his review for Rolling Stone,[16] while in his Consumer Guide column for The Village Voice, he wrote: "[I]f 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. It's a question of whether you use music to face your demons or to vault right over them."[6]

A minority of critics rated it as only average. Spencer Owen of Pitchfork Media viewed the album as lacking in distinction, saying "the sheen gets slicker and her music gets duller".[14] The publication later, however, ranked it at number 124 in their "The Top 200 Albums of the 2000s" list in 2009.[20]

Accolades

The album earned Harvey BRIT Award nominations as Best British Female Artist for two years running, as well as two Grammy Award nominations for Best Rock Album and Best Female Rock Performance for the single "This Is Love". For the album, Harvey was nominated for the 2001 Mercury Prize for the third time (her previous nominations were for Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love). The award ceremony was held on September 11, 2001. Harvey was in Washington, D.C. on that day and witnessed the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon from her hotel room window. She was announced as the winner and accepted her award by phone, saying "It has been a very surreal day. All I can say is thank you very much, I am absolutely stunned."[21] The win made Harvey the first female solo artist to receive the Mercury Prize in the awards history. The album was ranked number eight on Rolling Stone's list of The 50 Essential "Women In Rock" Albums.[22] In 2002, Q magazine named "Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea" the Greatest Album of All-Time by a Female Artist.[23] In 2006, the album was chosen by Time as one of the 100 best albums of all time.[24] In 2009, Pitchfork named the album the 124th Top Album of the 2000s.[25] In 2009, NME also placed the album inside their Top 100 Greatest Albums Of The Decade, at number 6 [26] Rolling Stone named it the thirty-fifth best album of the decade.[27]

Track listing

All songs written by PJ Harvey.

  1. "Big Exit" - 3:51
  2. "Good Fortune" - 3:20
  3. "A Place Called Home" - 3:43
  4. "One Line" - 3:14
  5. "Beautiful Feeling" - 4:00
  6. "The Whores Hustle and the Hustlers Whore" - 4:01
  7. "This Mess We're In" (featuring Thom Yorke) - 3:57
  8. "You Said Something" - 3:19
  9. "Kamikaze" - 2:24
  10. "This Is Love" - 3:48
  11. "Horses in My Dreams" - 5:38
  12. "We Float" - 6:07
  13. "This Wicked Tongue" - 3:42 (UK & Japan bonus track)

Singles and promo videos

Personnel

All personnel credits adapted from the album's liner notes.[28]

Musicians
  • PJ Harvey – vocals, guitar (1–3, 5–11), bass (1), keyboards (3, 4, 8, 10), piano (12), djembe (12), maracas (6), e-bow (12), producer, engineer
  • Rob Ellis – drums (2, 3, 6–12), piano (2, 3, 7, 11, 12), tambourine (1, 8, 10), synthesizer (2), keyboards (12), bells (12), harpsichord (1), electric piano (2), vibraphone (4), background vocals (11, 12), producer
  • Mick Harvey – organ, bass, drums (1, 4), percussion, harmonium (1), keyboards (7, 9, 10), accordion (4), background vocals (11, 12), producer
Guest musicians
Technical personnel
Design personnel
  • Rob Crane - design
  • Maria Mochnacz - design, photography

Charts

Album

References

  1. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  2. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  3. ↑ http://www.bpi.co.uk/certifiedawards/Search.aspx
  4. ↑ http://www.aria.com.au/pages/httpwww.aria.com.aupagesARIACharts-Accreditations-2007Albums.htm
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Relevant portion also posted at Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  7. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Portions posted at Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  8. ↑ [1]
  9. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  10. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  11. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  12. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  15. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Posted 26 October 2000. Also archived at Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  17. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  18. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  19. ↑ Columnist. Jay-Z Extends Chart 'Dynasty'. Billboard. Retrieved on 21 March 2010.
  20. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  21. ↑ BBC News, "PJ Harvey wins Mercury Prize"
  22. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. List posted at Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  23. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. List posted at Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  24. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  25. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  26. ↑ THE TOP 100 GREATEST ALBUMS OF THE DECADE NME 2000s
  27. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  28. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  29. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  30. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  31. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  32. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  33. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  34. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  35. ↑ 35.0 35.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  36. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  37. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  38. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  39. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  40. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  41. ↑ 41.0 41.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  42. ↑ Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea – PJ Harvey: Awards at AllMusic. Retrieved 4 July 2012.
  43. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  44. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  45. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
  46. ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found. Enter Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea in the field Keywords. Select Title in the field Search by. Select album in the field By Format. Select Platinum in the field By Award. Click Search

External links

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