As I was scrolling through my shameless social media addiction,
Instagram, a friend of mine posted a shot of the album cover for PJ Harvey's
Rid of Me (and, oh, what a cover it is!), remarking "still as raw, bracing, and wonderfully unsettling as ever." Though PJ Harvey is never far from my mind on any given day, I was reminded specifically of the first time I ever listened to the album, something I hadn't thought about in a long while. I probably shouldn't have been operating a motor vehicle at the time, because from the first note of the title track, I was entranced. I remember the exact intersection I was trying to make a left turn at when tears just started pouring down my face as Polly delivered that guts-on-the-floor, earthquake of a wail in the song "Legs." It wasn't that I started weeping; they weren't tears as I had known them before. They were just a way for my body to react/release/process that intensity. I can't think of any other album that opens with a more astonishing hat trick (the title track, "Missed," and of course "Legs") than
Rid of Me, but that's just one of the many superlatives I could use when talking about the album I've identified over the past ten years as my undisputed favorite album of all time.
