Imagine you’re Vincent Gallo and your girlfriend, Polly Harvey, dedicates a track to you on her new album. It’s a morose guitar and harmonium instrumental called “The End”, all of 80 seconds long. Straight after comes “The Desperate Kingdom Of Love”, before the stomach-lurching honesty of “The Darker Days Of Me And Him”. Gallo, you suspect, will be worried. Several plays may be needed before these musically bare-boned confessionals (stark riffs, occasional piano) take root. But when they do, it’s hard to deny the emotional weight and beauty of Polly’s personal, if comparatively uncommercial, sixth album.
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