Is This Desire? (studio album) by PJ Harvey
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PJ Harvey bestography
Is This Desire? is ranked 6th best out of 22 albums by PJ Harvey on BestEverAlbums.com.
The best album by PJ Harvey is Let England Shake which is ranked number 280 in the list of all-time albums with a total rank score of 6,299.
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Is This Desire? track list
The tracks on this album have an average rating of 81 out of 100 (all tracks have been rated).
Top-rated track as rated by BestEverAlbums.com members.
Is This Desire? rankings
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Is This Desire? collection
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Is This Desire? ratings
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Rating | Date updated | Member | Album ratings | Avg. album rating |
---|---|---|---|---|
04/12/2024 03:52 | Banner | 4,311 | 79/100 | |
04/04/2024 16:45 | Moler | 356 | 77/100 | |
04/03/2024 13:49 | considerthejosh | 546 | 83/100 | |
03/26/2024 20:12 | willtoshower | 1,484 | 73/100 | |
03/04/2024 19:11 | Hyggevinyl | 2,931 | 73/100 |
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Outliers can be removed when calculating a mean average to dampen the effects of ratings outside the normal distribution. This figure is provided as the trimmed mean. A high standard deviation can be legitimate, but can sometimes indicate 'gaming' is occurring. Consider a simplified example* of an item receiving ratings of 100, 50, & 0. The mean average rating would be 50. However, ratings of 55, 50 & 45 could also result in the same average. The second average might be more trusted because there is more consensus around a particular rating (a lower deviation).
(*In practice, some albums can have several thousand ratings)
This album is rated in the top 2% of all albums on BestEverAlbums.com. This album has a Bayesian average rating of 78.1/100, a mean average of 77.9/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 78.3/100. The standard deviation for this album is 12.2.
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This was a slow burner for me. One of the more moody brooding albums from her. Sits about midway within her catalog. Still one of the best female vocalists ever.
Up until this release Polly Jean had been on a hot streak so it was kinda inevitable an album wasn’t going to make it and this for mine is the one. Too experimental in parts with a bunch of genuine fillers off set with a couple of humdingers in “A Perfect Day Elise” and title track closer “Is This Desire? “
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Her most underrated album. Dark and difficult, but very good.
Best tracks: A Perfect Day Elise, The Wind, The River, The Garden.
I've been listening to Polly's albums for the last couple of weeks. Most of the albums go into similar "ballpark" to me, I like all of them, but apart from certain songs, I'm not exactly head over heels for them. Most of them aren't musically that interesting or diverse. And I feel a lot of what she's doing on some of the albums, was done better by some other artists. I don't want to seem too critical though, I enjoyed her albums, and as I said, all of them are at least good.
With Is This Desire? though, I feel that she keeps similar consistency throughout the album, but also manages to suprise me musically. Some of this stuff is borderline trip-hop! Then there's that trumpet on The River, and I also dig the subdued synths on some of the tracks, like Angelene or Catherine.
I honestly don't understand why this album doesn't get nearly the same amount of love as some of her efforts. IMO, it's her best.
PJ has a lot of great music, most of it off-beat (Stories From The City is probably her most accessible album), but nothing of hers prepared me for the haunting quality of this record. Probably the eeriest record I’ve heard since Kate Bush’s Hounds of Love. Not every song is great, but the ones that are—especially “A Perfect Day Elise,” “The River,” “Angelene,” and “No Girl So Sweet”—make this a Top 40 album for me.
Electronic touches and somewhat impersonal writing. It's not as good as her first three.
I get the same feeling from hearing this, that I get from listening to "Vespertine" from Björk, "Hell Hat No Fury" with Clipse and "Adore" from Smashing Pumpkins. It's these dark inaccessible records, which at first, sound like fragile failures, but which in the end, showes to have some kind of beautiful sense to the madness.
a very different album from PJ Harvey, with a remarkable electronic touch. all Bjork + Radiohead's fans can only love this album.
If you're coming from a more mainstream, pop sensibility, P.J Harey is a very challenging artist, and this is a challenging album.
I bought it when it came out on the strength of a Perfect Day Elise, but was horrified at how bad i thought the rest of the album was, so I put it in a box with other CDs, and there it stayed for a few years until i came across it again while going through the box for stuff to sell. I put it on, and was blown away... it's dark, a little terrifying, and acouple of tracks are still awful, but it's beautiful too.
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