Rid of Me

Recorded in December 1992 after a short American tour. Harvey chose Albini for his raw sound, and the sessions spanned two weeks, though she said most of the recording took three days. The songs were mostly played live. Albini produced everything except Man-Size Sextet, which Harvey, Ellis and Head produced. The record includes a cover of Bob Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited.

It reached three in the UK and 158 on the Billboard 200, and was shortlisted for the 1993 Mercury Prize, which went to Suede. Melody Maker's David Bennun wrote that no other British artist was so aggressively exploring the dark side of human nature. Pitchfork and Spin later gave it ten out of ten. Courtney Love called it a far superior record to Hole's Live Through This, and Albini said he gave it to Nirvana as a reference for In Utero. Rolling Stone placed it 405th in 2003 and 153rd in 2020.

Judy Berman wrote in a Pitchfork Sunday Review that Albini recorded the full trio at once and that the band spent barely two weeks in the studio, mixing included. Harvey said in one interview that she can get precious about things and that Albini does not allow it. Berman noted that the album opens at a whisper before every instrument turns to a scream, that Dry, written for the debut, was saved for this record, and that Man-Size appears in two versions, one of them a poem recited over a string sextet. Harvey played the title song alone on the Tonight Show on 24 September 1993, after the trio had split.