Well, we may have to once again credit Polly with one of the few popular releases worthy of the term "earth-shattering" in the last, hmm, ten years? Unlike this blog post, this album artfully breaks all the style and content barriers its aesthetic and subject matter generally enforce, while not really betraying just how radically it is departing to the passive listener. These aren't songs really, they're photographs. There is way too much clarity and yet grit to every single verbal image delivered here. The real triumph for alt rock's undisputed queen is managing to translate the universally alienating into heart-breaking intimacy through words and delivery. Somehow, PJ managed to do quivering falsetto and subdued rasp without sounding remotely like
White Chalk (in this author's opinion, her last great 'character' record before this) or anything else in her weighty catalog. I recommend sitting around the tree weeping to this one. Or you could always "spread a little love on Christmas day"...
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