<http://schema.org/reviewBody>
"&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;I asked her for water, she brought me gasoline,&amp;quot; Howlin&amp;apos; Wolf once complained &amp;#x2014; now along come Polly Jean Harvey and Liz Phair bearing matches. &amp;quot;Douse hair with gasoline/Set it light and set it free,&amp;quot; Harvey rhapsodizes on &amp;quot;Man-Size,&amp;quot; from her second album, &lt;em&gt;Rid of Me.&lt;/em&gt; &amp;quot;I clean the house/I put all your books in an order/Send it up on fire/Death before dawn,&amp;quot; Phair sings on &amp;quot;Canary,&amp;quot; one of eighteen tracks on her double-album-length debut.&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;wm:embed type=\"related\"&gt;&lt;/wm:embed&gt;&lt;p&gt;Both discs explore the toxic consequences of intimacy with a lacerating explicitness reminiscent of Marianne Faithfull&amp;apos;s &lt;em&gt;Broken English.&lt;/em&gt; Harvey: &amp;quot;I&amp;apos;ll make you lick my injuries.&amp;quot; Phair: &amp;quot;I&amp;apos;m a real cunt in spring/You can rend me by the hour.&amp;quot; Relationships don&amp;apos;t just end, they splatter. Yet listen closely, and you&amp;apos;ll hear these women laughing under their breath. That&amp;apos;s Phair doing Ethel Merman in the background as she sings about getting away &amp;quot;with what the girls called murder&amp;quot; on &amp;quot;Girls! Girls! Girls!&amp;quot; And that&amp;apos;s Harvey auditioning for a soap opera on &amp;quot;Legs&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;You were going to be my life, dammit!&amp;quot; And telling off some big ape in &amp;quot;Me Jane&amp;quot;: &amp;quot;Damn your chest-beating.&amp;quot;&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;Singer-guitarist Harvey and her two-man rhythm section &amp;#x2014; the British trio is known collectively as PJ Harvey &amp;#x2014; have been captured with you-were-there immediacy by noise bombardier Steve Albini. Robert Ellis&amp;apos;s drums play call and response with Harvey&amp;apos;s churning guitar, and his falsetto background vocals add yet another genderbending twist to the atmosphere of sexual vertigo. The problem with &lt;em&gt;Rid of Me&lt;/em&gt; is that its in-your-face dynamics don&amp;apos;t leave much room for Harvey to maneuver emotionally. Even the cello on the relatively subdued &amp;quot;Man-Size Sextet&amp;quot; sounds like something out of the shower scene in &lt;em&gt;Psycho.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;Despite its low-fi production, &lt;em&gt;Exile in Guyville&lt;/em&gt; roams giddily all over the pop landscape. On &amp;quot;Fuck and Run,&amp;quot; Phair, who lives in Chicago, manages to sound both wistful and pissed off. On &amp;quot;6&amp;apos;1&amp;quot;&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;Mesmerizing&amp;quot; she&amp;apos;s banging out chords that Keith Richards might admire. Folkie mood pieces (&amp;quot;Dance of the Seven Veils&amp;quot;) and spooky piano nocturnes (&amp;quot;Canary&amp;quot;) rub up against Patti Smith-style dialogues (&amp;quot;Flower&amp;quot;) and psychedelic whiteouts (&amp;quot;Gunshy&amp;quot;).&lt;/p&gt;\r\n&lt;p&gt;Phair writes sturdy riffs that render her rudimentary guitar technique beside the point &amp;#x2014; her largely midtempo material cuts through the surf like a shark fin. Above all, it&amp;apos;s her singing &amp;#x2014; wispy one minute, feral the next &amp;#x2014; that makes &lt;em&gt;Guyville&lt;/em&gt; sizzle.&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/exile-in-guyville-19930610>