Harvey's 'Desire' burns brilliantly

"Is this desire ... ," PJ Harvey asks on the title track of her fifth album, "enough? Enough to lift us higher?" This "Desire" is certainly enough to lift Harvey to the next plateau of rock stardom with its indescribable yet wholly accessible charm, making for an album that may be the best of her career.

More so than on her previous albums, which were largely raw, Harvey here crafts 12 songs of studio-polished magnetism, a blend of dramatic, blues-heavy, electro-goth hymns that vary in tempo and subject matter but stay united in their churning, sneering beauty.

But don't be fooled by the beauty of the music, these collected songs still sing the alt-rock blues and some get nastier than others.

That nastiness appeals to the vamp in everyone, the vamp that Polly Jean Harvey gets to be - the leather-clad, sexed-up, uninhibited rock star who delivers scathing bits like, "Till the light shines on me, I damn to hell every second you breathe."

Those words hail from "Catherine," a song of suspiciously hushed intensity that stands out as one of the darkest, most somber of the seamless, stellar tracks.

Also making a good, dark impression are the Depeche Mode-esque primal scream of "Joy," the classically arranged, nearly acoustic ballad "Angelene," the angry, dancehall swirl of "No Girl So Sweet," and the charged grind of "The Sky Lit Up."

Harvey also seems to lighten up on "The River," the most melodic of the tracks, using the deceptive self-help sweetness of its repeated hook, "Throw your pain in the river," to hide its melancholy core.

At the core of "Is This Desire?" is the gorgeously therapeutic holler of a voice that alternately roars and seeps out of Harvey, a sound so soulful and personal that the music backing it up could be viewed as irrelevant.

All the better for Harvey, the arrangements here are flawless and ceaselessly interesting, such as the sample of Jerry Goldsmith's "Planet of the Apes" score that haunts "The Wind," blending with the voice for an aural tapestry of intoxicating power.

But this is not a tapestry to be simply placed somewhere and appreciated occasionally.

No, "Is This Desire?" craves attention, unleashing your inner vamp as Polly Jean knocks you on your ass and seduces you with her singular genius in just more than 40 minutes. After PJ Harvey's "Desire," one needn't be lifted any higher.

09-29-98