"Down by the Water"

PJ Harvey
(Island, 1995)

Polly Jean Harvey always seems to be connected to something much older and deeper than herself, never more than in this song. It's a murder ballad where the crime is just barely obscured, a singsong rhyme made terrifying by the pain in her voice and the curdled nursery-rhyme whisper at the end. She surrounds her black-snake moan with sticky, dark sounds: strings that stay glued to a single note, an organ that growls like an animal through the whole song. And the words mess with folk-song tropes like nobody since Bob Dylan.

-- Douglas Wolk