Back in college, a friend of a friend gave me a cassette with PJ Harvey’s Dry album on one side and Rid of Me on the other. We did that kind of thing all the time; make copies of albums we loved and traded them with each other. I gave him some Soul Asylum and Throwing Muses and he gave me PJ Harvey. Anyway, I had a ton of homework and drawings to do for school one weekend and my roommate had gone home for a few days, so I put the tape in the stereo system and let it play for background music.
To put it bluntly – I didn’t like it.
So I started it again. Still wasn’t hitting me. I actually found it kind of annoying.
Somewhere about midway through the third listen, I finally got it. It hit me like a ton of bricks. A switch flipped and I didn’t just like it – I loved it. I needed it. I listened to it constantly from that point on. I ran out and bought my own CDs, waited impatiently for every new release, tried to catch every TV appearance, and even saw her in concert.
So forgive me if, in the midst of the weirdness and uncertainty that is 2020, I think the reissues of her back catalog on vinyl after being out of print forever, including demo albums for each release as stand-alone LPs, is the absolute best thing to happen so far this year.