PJ Harvey's third studio album 'To Bring You My Love' was released on this day in 1995.
Recorded at Townhouse Studios in London, it was produced by PJ Harvey, John Parish, and Flood, who also engineered and mixed the album. Longtime collaborator John Parish contributed to arrangements and instrumentation.
This is the tracking sheet from the original vinyl master.
Contributing musicians in order of appearance:
- PJ Harvey: vocals, organ, guitar, piano, vibraphone, marimba, bells, chimes, percussion
- John Parish: guitar, organ, drums, percussion
- Joe Gore: guitar, e-bow
- Jean-Marc Butty: drums, percussion
- Joe Dilworth: drums
- Mick Harvey: bass, organ
As well as:
- Pete Thomas: string arrangements
- Sonia Slany: violin
- Jules Singleton: viola
- Jocelyn Pook: viola
- Sian Bell: cello
The album cover features an image of PJ Harvey submerged in water, and was shot by photographer Valerie Phillips during the shooting of a film directed by Maria Mochnacz for the lead single 'Down By The Water'.
It remains a defining work in PJH's discography, marking a shift in sound and a new creative direction.

And you also played with PJ Harvey.

That was a good time and an intense year [1995]. I did two records with her and toured for a year.

Your PJ Harvey show at Glastonbury looked incredible.

For my money, that was the most exciting concert I’ve ever played. It was my favorite show that I played with Polly. The quality of the shows varied a lot. Polly was in a great deal of emotional back-and-forth about whether she wanted to be a slick, tight, knock-em-over-the-head rock pop star, or a gnomic cult singer songwriter not at all interested in pandering to the audience. She was only 25 at the time, and it was back-and-forth a lot. We’d have one show that would be very put together, and then she’d have a change of heart and do a show that was more willfully amateurish and ramshackle, less lights and production, less volume and less transition. That was a dynamic that went back-and-forth for a lot of the time that I was playing with her. But the Glastonbury show was the pinnacle of the big tight rock show.

Were you writing for Guitar Player and working with Tom Waits and PJ Harvey at the same time?

My schedule was flexible enough, and then after I went over to England to work on To Bring You My Love, Polly asked me to tour with her for almost all of 1995. I went to part-time status, and never went back to full-time status. I worked part-time in-house for a few years, and then I worked part-time out-of-house for a few years, and then my contribution was subject to a very long string of budget cuts, so I stopped writing for Guitar Player. I should add, I have nothing but respect for Mike Molenda and my other colleagues who carried on. I don’t think the magazine was always as good, but that was solely a function of the diminishing resources they had. Those guys did heroic work creating as much good stuff as they did, in an environment of complete exploitation and bleeding the magazine dry for maximum profits. I had the privilege of working in a very supportive work environment. Those guys, Mike and Art Thompson in particular, worked for decades in an extremely hostile environment.