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Dry is the debut studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on Too Pure Records on 30 March 1992.The album was recorded at The Icehouse, a local studio in Yeovil, United Kingdom. The first 5000 LPs and first 1000 CDs included demo versions of the album's tracks and Dry was subsequently released in the United States on Indigo Records in the US. Both versions were released in 1992.

Rid of Me is the second studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in May 1993, approximately one year after the release of her critically acclaimed debut album Dry. It marked a departure from Harvey’s previous songwriting, being more raw and aggressive than its predecessor.

The songs on Rid of Me were performed by Harvey’s eponymous trio, consisting of Harvey on guitar and vocals, Rob Ellis on drums and background vocals, and Steve Vaughan on bass. It was the last album they recorded as a group before disbanding in late 1993. Most of the songs on the album were recorded by Steve Albini. Rid of Me was met with acclaim by critics. It has been ranked at number 406 on Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.

4-Track Demos is an album of demos by British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. It was released in October 1993 by Island Records. It consists of 8 demos of songs from her previous album, Rid of Me, along with 6 demos of some unreleased tracks which never made it to release with the three-piece PJ Harvey line-up. According to interviews with Harvey, all fourteen of these songs were written and demoed at her home between mid-1991 and autumn 1992. 4-Track Demos was Harvey's first self-produced album, a job she would not take on again until 2004's Uh Huh Her.

To Bring You My Love is the third studio album by English alternative rock musician PJ Harvey. It was released by Island Records in February 1995. Recorded after the break-up of the PJ Harvey trio it stands as her first proper solo album. The songs on the album are heavily influenced by American blues music.

Harvey co-produced the record with Flood and John Parish. To Bring You My Love would be the first of Harvey's many collaborations with Flood and Parish. The music on the album was played largely by Harvey and Parish, with contributions from seasoned musicians Joe Gore, Mick Harvey, Jean-Marc Butty, and others. Many of the musicians who appeared on the album joined Harvey on tour to support it in 1995.

To Bring You My Love is considered to be PJ Harvey's breakthrough. It garnered massive critical acclaim worldwide and became her best-selling album. The single "Down by the Water" received extensive airplay on radio and on MTV. The album was placed on Rolling Stone magazine's original list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

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Dance Hall at Louse Point is the debut collaborative studio album by English alternative rock musicians PJ Harvey and John Parish, released on 23 September 1996 on Island Records.

Is This Desire? is the fourth studio album by English musician PJ Harvey, released on 28 September 1998 on Island Records.

Recorded on and off in Dorset and London between April 1997 and April 1998, it was co-produced by Flood, Head and Harvey herself, and featured instrumental contributions from Rob Ellis, John Parish, Mick Harvey, Eric Drew Feldman, Joe Gore and Jeremy Hogg. It marked a move away from Harvey’s earlier guitar-driven rock style into subtler, quieter, atmospheric soundscapes and mood pieces based around keyboards, bass and electronics.

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.

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. It is generally regarded as one of her best works. In the updated version of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time, it was ranked at number 431.

Uh Huh Her is the sixth studio album by English alternative rock musician PJ Harvey. The album was written, recorded and produced over a two-year period by the singer-songwriter herself. She also played every instrument in the album – a first from Harvey since 4-Track Demos in 1993 – with the exception of the final drum tracks, added by long-time collaborator Rob Ellis. It was released on 31 May 2004 in the United Kingdom and on 8 June 2004 in the United States.

To support the release, Harvey toured for seven months. She performed in various European summer festivals such as Glastonbury and opened for Morrissey in a few dates. During the same tour she also performed the album's unreleased title-track. Uh Huh Her debuted and peaked at number 12 in the UK Albums Chart and has been certified Silver by the BPI.[5] It became Harvey's highest charting album to date in the U.S., peaking at number 29 in the Billboard 200, and had sold more than 135,000 copies there as of 2005, according to AskBillboard. Although it charted higher than Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea in many territories, Uh Huh Her failed to achieve its predecessor chart longevity and crossover interest.

The album received largely positive reviews upon its release, although there was some criticism towards its production. It currently holds a 79 out of 100 metascore at Metacritic based upon 28 reviews, indicating "Generally Favorable Reviews". Uh Huh Her also earned PJ Harvey nominations to awards such as the Grammy Awards and the Brit Awards.

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White Chalk is the seventh studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on 24 September 2007 on Island Records.

Work on the album started in 2006, with producer Flood and John Parish, who also worked on her To Bring You My Love and Is This Desire? albums. Other collaborators on White Chalk are Eric Drew Feldman and Jim White from Dirty Three.

The first single to be released from White Chalk was "When Under Ether" on 17 September 2007 on digital download and 7" vinyl. A second single, "The Piano," was released on 26 November 2007. A third, "The Devil," was released on 7", download, and CD formats in March 2008.

A Woman a Man Walked By is the second collaborative studio album English alternative rock musicians PJ Harvey and John Parish, released on 27 March 2009 by Island Records.

It is the second collaboration between Harvey and Parish, following 1996's Dance Hall at Louse Point. The album was recorded in Bristol and Dorset, and mixed by Flood. This album is made up of ten new songs. All the music is written by Parish, who also plays most of the instruments. The vocals and all lyrics are by Harvey. The first single from the album is "Black Hearted Love" which is described as having 'anthemic grunge-pop guitars.'

Let England Shake is the eighth studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on 14 February 2011 by Island Records. Production began around the time of White Chalk's release in 2007, though it is a departure from the piano-driven introspection of that album. Let England Shake was written over a two-and-a-half year period, and recorded in five weeks at a church in Dorset during April and May 2010.

Upon release, the album received numerous accolades. It was placed 2011 "Album of the Year" by 16 publications and in September 2011 won the coveted Mercury Prize. It was PJ Harvey's fourth nomination overall (including another win in 2001), making her the most successful artist in the prize's history. The album also won the Uncut Music Award in November 2011, as well as Album of the Year in the 2012 Ivor Novello Awards.

Harvey began writing lyrics for the album before setting the words to music. She has cited the poetry of Harold Pinter and T.S. Eliot as influences, as well as the artwork of Salvador Dalí and Francisco de Goya and music of The Doors, The Pogues, and The Velvet Underground.She has also spoken of researching the history of conflict, including the Gallipoli Campaign, and reading modern-day testimonies from civilians and soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.

During some solo shows some years prior to working on this album, Harvey had begun playing the autoharp. She told local newspaper Bridport News in 2011: "I was really enjoying this different, enormous, wide breadth of sound that the autoharp gives. It's quite a delicate sound, but it's also like having an entire orchestra at your fingertips. I began by writing quite a lot on the autoharp, and then slowly as time went by, (because this album was written over two and a half years)… my writing started moving into experimenting with different guitars, and using different sound applications, ones that I had never really experimented with."

On the subject of a new vocal style for the album, Harvey commented that "I couldn't sing [the songs] in a rich strong mature voice without it sounding completely wrong. So I had to slowly find the voice, and this voice started to develop, almost taking on the role of a narrator."[6]

 

Harvey told Spinner in March 2009 that she had recorded demos for the album and planned to record in early 2010, commenting: "All I can say is that I am pleased with it, because I feel it's a grand departure from anything [I've done] before. If I've done that, then for me, it's worked. I'm already feeling like I did, and I'm happy. I'm very pleased because I'm not repeating myself."

After initially searching for recording studios in Berlin in mid-2009 while touring A Woman a Man Walked By with John Parish, Harvey instead opted to record at St. Peter's Church, Eype, near Bridport in Dorset. She told Bridport News: "I remembered that the man who now runs this church as an arts venue had said to me a few times if I'd ever wanted to use it for a show or rehearsals that he'd love that, and that's when I approached him and asked if we could use it."

The album was recorded in the church in a five-week period in April and May 2010[6] with long-time collaborators John Parish and Mick Harvey, and with Parish and Flood co-producing; drummer Jean-Marc Butty added parts at a later stage. Much of the record was recorded live, and Harvey has described the recording as reasonably improvisational, commenting: "I wanted to leave room for them so they could bring their feelings into it as well. Usually I would have planned everything and known what instrumentation I wanted. This time I demoed the songs mostly with one or two instruments with a voice and that was as much as I had. So I basically had the chords and a couple of saxophone melodies, a couple of voice melodies and that was what I took with me to the church. We rehearsed the songs as if we were rehearsing to play them live and found quite quickly that we had only rehearsed a song through maybe twice and Flood had started recording us." The sessions were recorded by engineer Rob Kirwan.

The album features Harvey's first on-record use of the saxophone.

The Hope Six Demolition Project is the ninth studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on 15 April 2016 on Island Records. The album is Harvey's first since her acclaimed Mercury Prize-winning album Let England Shake, released in 2011. At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards, the album was nominated for Best Alternative Music Album, her fourth nomination in that category and seventh nomination overall.

The album's title is a reference to the HOPE VI projects in the United States, "where run-down public housing in areas with high crime rates has been demolished to make room for better housing, but with the effect that many previous residents could no longer afford to live there, leading to claims of social cleansing". The HOPE VI program is directly referenced in the album's opening track and second single, "The Community of Hope". The title is inspired by Harvey's trip to Washington D.C. with photographer/filmmaker Seamus Murphy where she was given a tour by Paul Schwartzman of The Washington Post, who directly influenced some of the lyrics on the song. Upon its release, the song drew criticism directly from politicians running for the council seat in Ward 7 in Washington, D.C.

Harvey wrote the songs for The Hope Six Demolition Project as well as her poetry book The Hollow of the Hand during her travels to Kosovo, Afghanistan and Washington D.C. with photographer/filmmaker Seamus Murphy between 2011 and 2014.

The album was created in sessions open to the public as part of an art installation at Somerset House in London called Recording in Progress. The sessions were forty-five minutes each in length and lasted for a month, beginning on 16 January 2015 and concluding on 14 February. Viewers could see Harvey create the album through one-way glass with producers Flood and John Parish, both of whom had worked on Harvey's previous album Let England Shake.

Mobile phones and devices with recording capabilities were confiscated before entering and viewers were led to a basement-level room. During the first viewing, she was working on a song called "Near the Memorials to Vietnam and Lincoln", which is featured on the album. Harvey was reportedly playing violin, harmonica and hurdy-gurdy. It was also reported that she was joined by musicians Terry Edwards and James Johnston and that Seamus Murphy was filming the entire session.

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PJ Harvey discography information sourced from Wikipedia. Text of CC BY-SA 3.0 Unported License