The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion

Still, when "Acme" works, it goddam works. "Lovin’ Machine" is one of the year’s most irresistible songs, taking a ringing guitar riff as foundation, and gradually layering a barrelhouse piano, moogs, and maracas on top—then breaking the whole mess down and building it up again. It makes you want to dance, it makes you want to drink, it makes you want to drive fast and laugh hysterically. All the bits also help swell "Torture," another killer number, to epic proportions. A three-note piano riff and scrap of falsetto crooning provide the hooks for Spencer’s moaning and shrieking, then a string section sweeps in at the end and escalates it all to agonized soul-ballad level.

Not that all of "Acme" is riffs and bits; a good half/third of it is typical Blues Explosion tunes, but they don’t seem to generate the maelstrom of energy they used to. "Acme" is an interesting album, one that makes you look forward to the next effort—if this one sometimes falls short, it’s because the aim was higher.
—Lissa Townsend Rodgers

That's the real problem. Love's attempt to please everyone is pandering of the first degree. She tries to keep one foot placed in her past and the other pointed toward her future, and the result is a CD full of forgettable moments. For such an enigmatic character, known for doing exactly what she wants, the death knell isn't bad reactions, it's no reaction at all, which is exactly what "Celebrity Skin" deserves.
—Shan Fowler

Polly Jean Harvey’s newest album is further evidence of her uniqueness as a musician. It's not only her seamless mingling of everything from techno to country to rock to trip-hop to gospel that sets her apart, but also her subject matter and attitude toward it. Harvey is a master of exploring and conveying obsession, whether through the eyes of the object or the one fixated. "Is This Desire?" presents a cast of enigmatic women—Leah, Joy, Catherine, Elise, Dawn—whose stories unfold over constantly shifting, alternately subtle and overpowering backgrounds. "Anglene" opens with a spare country guitar, joined by a marching beat that rolls like storm clouds on the horizon as the lady of the title lists her charms, sins, and virtues. Then the tension breaks abruptly into rapture, organs sinking in, pianos pounding, as she calls on God or the Devil— doesn’t matter who, as long as it’s a man "who will collect my soul and come to me."

Not that it’s all orchestration and effects and whisperings. In "My Beautiful Leah" the weight of the narrator’s infatuation is reflected in the heaviness of the music-the sort of beats you hear echoing through deserted city streets at night, sepulchral synths oozing, horror-movie strings flashing like lightning. "No Girl So Sweet," which sounds like a techno remix of a "Four-Track Demos" outtake, is one of the few songs that actually have prominent, recognizable guitars. "Joy" is late-80’s neo-industrial death-grind, the vocals an agonized yelp.

"The Wind" is about Catherine who "liked high places," who abandoned her life to brood alone in "a chapel with her image on the wall. Her tale is related in a deadpan whisper, joined by another voice—still Harvey, but now a high, light croon—which shifts constantly between echoing and predicting the whispered words. The musical backdrop is as intriguing as the story: an initial guitar figure and brushed drums are overtaken by beats, synths, wooshings, and a host of distant-sounding effects that respond to the story being spun. Later on the album comes "Catherine," in which a simple drumbeat and trickle of keyboards drift behind the narrator weakly cursing "Catherine DeBara, you’ve murdered my thinking/I gave you my heart, you left the thing stinking." Is it the same woman? Is this what she left behind? Maybe, but the most enigmatic heroine on "Is This Desire?" is Harvey, who leaves us to draw our own conclusions.
—Lissa Townsend Rodgers