Is This Desire?

After the clear-cut artistic success of To Bring You My Love, PJ Harvey slowed herself down. She took two and a half years to record the follow-up with the lovely and shockingly subtle Is This Desire?. Where her other albums had gone for the red meat of rural blues and electrified post-punk guitars, Is This Desire? dipped itself into arrangements that defied easy categorization. The drums could still pummel on the fuzzed-out freakout of “A Perfect Day Elise,” but they took a backseat to the ethereal and avant-garde touches of “Angelene,” “The Sky Lit Up” and “Electric Light,” where one can hear her idiosyncratic style coming together amidst the forced isolation of living on a large estate back in her hometown of Yeovil. Her alliances with Nick Cave and Captain Beefheart encouraged her to explore her most insular impulses and tracks such as “Catherine,” “My Beautiful Leah” and “The Garden” speak a private musical language that pushes forth a beautiful and true vision of Harvey’s haunted world.