To Bring You My Love by PJ Harvey

To Bring You My Love, PJ Harvey's third album, came out on Island on 27 February 1995, and it's the first one she made after the PJ Harvey trio fell apart, her first true solo record. She co-produced it with Flood and John Parish, the start of a long partnership with both, and she and Parish played most of it themselves, with help from Joe Gore, Mick Harvey, Jean-Marc Butty and others.

The album is soaked in American blues, but it's blues filtered through a fevered, gothic imagination: slow-burning, sinister and swampy, with Harvey's voice swinging from a low, seductive murmur to a full-throated wail. "Down by the Water" creeps along on a hypnotic, eerie pulse, the title track smolders with a dark, brooding intensity, "Send His Love to Me" aches and pleads, "Long Snake Moan" roars and writhes, and "C'mon Billy" is haunted and desperate.

It was her breakthrough. Critics around the world raved, "Down by the Water" got heavy airplay on radio and MTV, and it became her best-selling studio album. It was nominated for the Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album, and many of the players on the record joined her on the road in 1995.

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