Rid of Me is one of those odd, fucked up instances of artistic immortality – like the bizarre Henry James novella Turn of the Screw – that makes you wonder how a work so recalcitrant became a classic. Even today, it remains awkward, ungainly and raw — less full bodied than some of Harvey’s other work, less driven by characters or narratives. Her first LP, Dry, is not exactly a cheery album either, but compared to Rid of Me it has a lot of spirit. Dry is out all night at parties coming home re-energized by the experience. Rid of Me sounds like its energy is illuminated by a strange mania – dragged over the coals after a bender that spanned lost years in the mid-20s. I still can’t listen to the full album without experiencing what feels very like a sympathetic hangover. Honestly, I often take it in by ingesting the chunks that I can handle and then throwing it away for a while. I always think of classic albums as ones that flow seamlessly. But the songs on Rid of Me stutter and falter, governed by random jolts and impulses of erratic energy.
This is why I think of Rid of Me as a very early 90s album: ornery, hungover, and ugly, and no better man for the job of recording such an album than Steve Albini. Though PJ later hired the ubiquitous Flood to produce To Bring You My Love, Rid of Me is a more representatively messy stab in the entrails, with its metallic, distortion-heavy guitars and frequent screaming.
Harvey always said she liked exploring what was dark and unacceptable. This naturally led to much probing over the years from journalists who thought she must be a crazy she-monster with a feminist agenda. Bravely, politely in her always pleasant West Country tones, Harvey would explain that she was doing this alone as an artist exploring new territories, rather than as a feminist backed by a cause. Judging by the influences she cited at the time of making Rid of Me, Harvey was attempting to harness the dirty power of the blues and rock that she had grown up with (she cited Howlin’ Wolf amongst others). On To Bring You My Love, it was Captain Beefheart who stoked the fires of her strange narratives.
Enter the 33 1/3 series tribute to Rid of Me. Unlike other books in the classic album series, it’s a novel about two women’s escape into a Sapphic relationship. I can’t criticize it as a work of literature, not having read it. But if I were to sum up Rid of Me as a story, it wouldn’t be a fable – and certainly not a fable of escaping into an interior women-only world. PJ Harvey may have been recovering from a failed relationship at the time of making the album, but when she recorded these splintered, heroic tracks, she was playing energetically in the studio with her all-male band. She spoke highly of Steve Albini for his supportive, deliberate fidelity to the band’s sound. It’s not that this can’t be a feminist album if you want it to be. It’s just that the anger – as captured in the studio - is staunchly individualistic, doesn’t expect to be saved or damned, doesn’t expect or ask much – just hinges on the survival of its protagonist.
The line: “I might as well be dead… but I could kill you instead” says it all for me. Rid of Me is PJ’s realist album: in the eye of the storm its extreme emotional circumstances demand extreme unpleasant reactions. It isn’t one of Harvey’s dress-up albums, like To Bring You My Love, or recently, White Chalk. There are no murder ballads, or songs named after doomed women (as on Is This Desire?). The genius of strident songs like “Me Jane” is the extreme irritability of them. “Damn your chest-beating, stop your fucking screaming” – could well be the cry of a harassed female neighbor living underneath’s Tarzan’s flat - or Todd Aikin or whoever is doing the tiresome chest-beating this week.
