PJ Harvey the band is named after the initials of the lead singer and founder Polly Jean Harvey which can be a bit confusing. The band?s sixth album "Stories from The City, Stories From The Sea" opens with the hell-raising "Big City". The song in part summarises the history behind the album. Harvey wrote the songs on this album in New York ("I walk on concrete") and at a coastal location in England ("I walk on sand").

All the 12 songs on the CD are original and are written by Harvey herself. The album is best enjoyed as a unit to be played from the first track to the last, without skipping some songs. "The Big City" depicts a disturbed psyche and a suitably loud and tortured PJ shouts: "This world is crazy/Give me the gun". Like Queen?s "Bohemian Rhapsody", this is the kind of song that generates success through excessive air play (bearing in mind that Queen knew a radio DJ who played their song over and over and ensured its sudden popularity). In the case of PJ Harvey, their song has constantly been played on MTV and radio, possibly due to the fact that they are well-known, rather than because the song is outstanding.

The song provides the start to an above average album, laden with shifting moods.

The second track "Good Fortune", shows influences of the legendary Patti Smith (credited with pioneering the Angry Grrrl image). The track carries traces of Smith songs like "Mozambique" and "Redondo Beach". Interestingly, PJ Harvey?s CD contains a track called "Horses In My Dreams" (Smith is famously known for the groundbreaking 1975 album "Horses").

If you?re an avid Radiohead fan, then you'll likely lose out on the apparent plenitude of the album by preferring tracks four, five and seven, which feature Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke.

The moaning one enters on "One Line", playing keyboard and providing the background vocals.

On "Beautiful Feeling", Yorke raises his profile. The song is meant to be a happy piece but for those familiar with Yorke, he is naturally and permanently melancholic and he offsets the positive atmosphere the song may have been geared at imparting. The outcome is a song that is neither uplifting nor dejection-inducing.

Yorke hums and croons in the background in his traditional moanful manner. This being one of his greatest assets, one is more often than not left craving for more of the same from the lead singer of Britain?s most popular band.

On "The Mess We?re In", Yorke takes over the vocals and the song is typically Radiohead-sounding. The storyline is about Yorke?s encounter with Harvey in New York: "You met me/I think it?s Wednesday".

The overwhelming perception is that two Britons are thrown in together by circumstance and together try to escape the inexpressible confines of an alien city: "And I have seen/The sunrise/Over the river/The freeway/Reminding/Of this mess we?re in".

To categorise PJ Harvey?s music is not easy but it appears to be a cross between light rock, folk and Britpop and in some instances the three genres can be heard being used separately.

Track nine "Kamikaze" is both heavy and fast and may serve to counterbalance the lighter shades on some of the earlier tracks.

The CD ends with the biographical "We Float", a haunting track about past hardships which also showcases the writing talents that won PJ Harvey accolades such as Best Songwriter and Best New Female Singer from The Village Voice and Rolling Stone.

This is a must for PJ Harvey fans. But for those who do not place them among their favourites, they may not need to go out of their way to collect this CD.