It will come as no surprise that Radiohead are responsible for a lot of my music tastes. It was through interviews with them that finally pushed me towards Joy Division, The Smiths and R.E.M, but the most important discovery didn't come from the band. Instead it came from the reputation of Thom York’s duet with Polly Jean Harvey on "This Mess we’re in", one of the many classics from her album Stories from the City, Stories From The Sea.
The main attraction for me was obviously Thom York, and the fact that he was singing about sex, nothing cryptic in those lyrics, this was about a doomed affair taking place with New York as the dramatic backdrop. From there I was hooked, but I couldn't have known what an extraordinary artist I had found. PJ Harvey is perhaps the only artist that can match Radiohead (and at times beat them to a bloody pulp) with her talent, ambition, and willingness to experiment with every album. Stories From the City is the place in which many fans start with, it is after all her most accessible work. From there it was classic album after classic: Dry and Rid of Me taking me through her blistering rock and roll years in which she ripped the face off of grunge, onto her more experimental albums: To Bring You My Love, and the criminally underrated Is This Desire.
This Mess We're in was like finding a map that told me exactly where the treasure was, and that only I could read it, on top of all of that PJ Harvey opened my eyes to the female side of music, as I was still a champion of the pale tortured male geniuses, so without her I wouldn't have Yeah Yeah Yeahs, St Vincent, Patti Smith, and Sharon Van Etten. Just like Thom Yorke led me to PJ Harvey , she led me to new horizons and new perspectives.
