The last time we visited with Ms. Harvey, we enjoyed the straightforward use of rock and roll that twists the tropes that we detested in rock music circa 2000. Well, we now rewind the clock about seven years to the early days of her career, before the spotlights and gigantic rock sounds.

While Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea had a macro focus on New York from the sky (I believe I used a Peter Pan metaphor to describe it, and a quick look back at my notes proves I’m right), this album takes a far more micro look at a seedy club in the middle of a sprawling metropolis. This is the romanticized image of rock – mom’s minivan in the back that’s hauled the gear to the 50-person legion hall, only one complimentary drink at the bar for the entire band to share, and you have to be out at 11pm so that they can set up for bingo the next morning.

As is often the case, these shows have the groups that are pushing the envelope on what they can do musically. Friends of mine call it “playing beyond yourself” – sure, you can play something in a complex time with different rhythms every five seconds, but to what end are you doing it? Are you deliberately trying to use those things to express yourself or are you just doing it to be cool? In either case, the usual result for the audience is alienation.

The exception is Rid of Me. Being in the space that these musicians create – unbridled noise that doesn’t necessarily follow the conventional structures, but hits you right in the angst bone nonetheless. Harvey’s primal screams are scattered throughout the record like hot pepper flakes on your favorite chicken wings, and these pair well with other harsher elements, like the metallic cymbal attacks on “Legs”, the spine-tingling slide guitar on “Ecstasy”, or the distorted vocals on “Hook”. No matter the structure, the most noteworthy part of the entire record to me is the sense of power that emanates from the entire group. It’s literally as though you are watching a concert take place in a power station. So what if you forgot your hard hat and insulation gloves. You want to feel the shock.

As a drum enthusiast alone, Rid of Me is everything I could ever want and then some. There is no regard for the instruments or human life in the playing of Rob Ellis. Just hammer it out until there’s nothing left in your soul to give. As a music enthusiast, this is even more than I could have wanted. “Man-Size – Sextet” is absolutely spell-binding in its atonality and chaos, as though Alban Berg and Tom Waits met in some over-cleaned Russian tea room and plotted it out for the 20-something year old English songwriter.

This anomaly is followed by arguably the most unorthodox Bob Dylan cover you will ever hear in your life. This is not the Americana “Highway 61 Revisited”, the one you could drive with your family in the backseat of your minivan with ice cream cones in hand. This highway is what you ride in the post-apocalyptic Mad Max world and you are seeking food and clothes for the Cold Times. This cover blends so nicely into the next track, “50 Ft. Queenie” that I had to check whether Harvey had actually inserted her own verse into a cover.

Rid of Me is a dish best served outside of somewhere you feel comfortable. It pushes you outside of your home and onto the late-night streets somewhere that you don’t feel 100% safe. My advice would be to just embrace the wild and unbridled and let Harvey’s righteous power wash over you. Maybe even commit a minor act of vandalism – like smack a stop sign or kick over an old sand castle.

Here’s two different kinds of angst you can feel today. Try on the raging “Hook”:

 

Then prepare to feel just all kinds of on edge with the “Man-Size – Sextet”: