The West Country diva Polly Jean Harvey blazed a confrontational trail through the nineties with several albums of jagged poetry and fierce guitar-driven rock. Her new record sees her in a different, almost optimistic mood. But while most of the tracks have an intriguing ambiguity (including an effectively creepy collaboration with Thom Yorke), they never really come together into a satisfying whole. Harvey's sense of theatrics is still in place but it all feels more polished and less intense than her earlier work and therefore doesn't have quite the same resonance.
