Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| About.com | |
| Allmusic | |
| Robert Christgau | A- |
| Entertainment Weekly | A+ |
| NME | (9/10) |
| Q | |
| Rolling Stone | Favorable |
| The Rolling Stone Album Guide | |
Upon its release, Dry received positive critical acclaim. Former Village Voice editor and Pazz & Jop journalist Robert Christgau described the album as an "essential feminist distinction between egoist bullroar and honest irrational outpouring--and of course by her postrockist guitar, where she starts to reinvent her instrument the way grrrl-punks reinvent their form," rating the album an A-. According to Variety, the album was “not so much stripped-down rock as it is flayed-alive rock”. MTV described it as "a dark, twisted, arresting work which sounds both rubbed red raw and invigorating", while the NME praised it as "a crossover point possessing natural songwriting and scorching guitar noise" in its 9/10 review. Around the time of the album’s release, Harvey attracted some controversy for posing topless, with her back to the camera and baring an unshaven armpit, on the cover of NME. Received as well in the States as the UK, the album prompted Rolling Stone magazine to name the then-22-year-old Harvey the year's Best Songwriter and Best New Female Singer. In spite of the acclaim, "Sheela-Na-Gig" was the only single to chart in the US, at #9 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart.
Read more about this topic: Dry (album)
Famous quotes containing the word reception:
“But in the reception of metaphysical formula, all depends, as regards their actual and ulterior result, on the pre-existent qualities of that soil of human nature into which they fall—the company they find already present there, on their admission into the house of thought.”
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“I gave a speech in Omaha. After the speech I went to a reception elsewhere in town. A sweet old lady came up to me, put her gloved hand in mine, and said, “I hear you spoke here tonight.” “Oh, it was nothing,” I replied modestly. “Yes,” the little old lady nodded, “that’s what I heard.””
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“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
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