Daily Arts Writer

Saying that Stories From the City, Stories from the Sea is the happiest-sounding album P.J. Harvey has ever made is a little like saying "Tit To Tit 5" is the least-pornographic film Tawney Peaks has ever made: Though it's much livelier than Is This Desire? Harvey's last record, Stories is still darker and moodier than just about anything you'll hear this year.

All the same, Harvey, now five albums into her career, seems more willing to take things in stride than to brood on them; just check out "We Float, " the elegantly wistful closer that features a rather genial (for Harvey) chorus of "Now we float / take life as it comes." Or maybe it's that Stories is simply more upbeat than what we've come to expect from Harvey: For every contemplative downer that shows up on the record, there's a track like "Kamikaze," a lightning-speed barnburner complete with foreboding riffs, hip-hop drums and Harvey's angst-y caterwauling.

If anything, Stories makes comparisons between Harvey and Patti Smith all the more apropos, and not just because of Harvey's punky-yet-doleful style of singing or the laundry-list of sordid images that pile up like garbage in the streets of New York City (which, by the way, is the city Stories' title refers to) on "This Mess We're In."

Like Smith, Harvey has a knack for cramming line after line of witty, expressive and acerbic poetry into songs that would be compelling even if you couldn't understand a word she sang. Stories is the sound of those songs growing ever so slightly brighter and more rockin'. More power to you, Polly Jean.

Grade: B+