Indie/Alternative charts

Review:  2000's Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea is a lauded set that many critics still cite as one of the singer-songwriter's greatest works. Famously, most of the songs focus on love and relationships and were written while Harvey was living in New York City at the tail end of the '90s. It remains a fine album that has stood the test of time well, with highlights including soaring opener 'Big Exit', jangling sing-along 'A Place Called Home', the sparse and haunting 'Beautiful Feeling' and full-throttle, grunge-inspired rocker 'Kamikaze'.

Review: It has been said before that Polly Jean Harvey's 1998 album, Is This Desire, marked a watershed moment in her career. A veritable coming of age record that failed to match the commercial heights of To Bring You My Love, but was actually a far more complete and personal thing. Less angry than preceding efforts, it painted a more balanced and accurate portrait of an artist whose formative years were pockmarked with media analysis and criticism of her visible powerful attributes - sexuality and fury.

Coupled with the fact that Harvey has never been one to pander to scenes in the hope of top ten chart success, and you can only imagine how happy she was with the finished product. And all this is before we start banging on about the musicality, from title track's subtle, hushed baritone blues to the garage rock-out of 'A Perfect Day Elise'.

Review: You can never really understate the impact Polly Jean Harvey had when she landed on the UK music scene, and the radars of tastemakers like John Peel, in the early-1990s. Guitar tracks at the time were usually split into unashamedly lager-soaked upfront Britpop, or nihilistic and self-sabotaging grunge and metal from the US. PJ Harvey was neither, and on 'To Bring You My Love' she perfected a particularly UK take on heavy, darkroom rock.

Pressing play means stepping into a world where the blues can either be a sparse, pitch black tome ('To Bring You My Love') or stomping and sweat-soaked juggernaut ('Meet Ze Monsta'), and that's just referencing the first two songs. Compare either to the trip-hop infused downtempo melancholia of 'The Dancer', and it's pretty clear why this was one of the albums of its decade.

Review: While it had only been a few months since the release of her 4 Track Demos project, when To Bring You My Love first arrived in 1994 it felt like it had been a long time coming. Taking elements that made her early studio efforts stand out - the twisted mania of Dry and the Patti Smith-esque agony of Rid of Me - here Polly Jean Harvey fully embraced a kind of pained grunge-blues.

The resulting brew is particularly potent. Whether you're listening to the hushed, mysterious groove of 'Working For The Man', 'Long Snake Moan''s dark metal edges, or the sparse, troubled and deeply pained anthem 'Teclo', everything here is clearly the work of a genius. A fact that rings particularly true given these stunning versions represent her work in its original demo form.

Review: We've been treated to reissues of everything else from PJ Harvey's spectacular catalogue, so it's only right we get a chance to savour the deeper cuts that shape out the persona of the high priestess of alternative rock. Gathering together an exhaustive 59 B sides, demos and previously unreleased tracks, this six-LP box set takes us into the heart of Polly Jean's writing process, showing the raw power in the songwriting when it's just her voice and an overdriven guitar, and showing us the broader possibilities of songs which didn't make the cut for the studio albums. This is a true treasure of music getting the authoritative release she deserves.

Review: PJ Harvey's ongoing vinyl reissue series has finally arrived at 2007's White Chalk, an album that at the time was thought of as something of a curveball from the West Country singer-songwriter. Unlike its predecessors, which were celebrated for their raw, fuzzy, stripped-back alt-rock sound, White Chalk emerged after Harvey decided to write an album of "piano songs" - despite having no experience playing the instrument herself. With Flood and John Parish handling production duties, the set's tracks were generally lighter and breezier sonically, with a little more polish and much more restricted use of electric guitar. Harvey's lyrics are as distinctive as ever, though, offering a clear contrast to the pastoral and oddly traditional feel of the music.

Review: Polly Jean Harvey broke into the common conscious with her unique and individual approach to alternative rock, and she's managed to maintain that aural autonomy throughout a storied career that has simultaneously found favour in the musical mainstream and refused to stray far from the leftfield. A difficult balance to strike, this, her eighth solo studio album, is indicative of that point. There's nothing here not to enjoy, but there's very little here you could predict.

Not least given where it sits in her back catalogue. Production began as the seminal but decidedly hushed White Chalk was released, and this record couldn't be more different from the preceding LP. Doing away with introspect, for the most part anyway, and refocusing attention away from pianos, it's a rousing indie collection that further cements the artist as one of Britain's national treasures.