Professional ratings
Review scores
Source	Rating
AllMusic
Chicago Tribune
Entertainment Weekly	A+
Los Angeles Times
NME	9/10
Pitchfork	9.2/10
Q
The Rolling Stone Album Guide
Select	4/5
The Village Voice	A−

Dry is the debut studio album by English singer-songwriter and musician PJ Harvey, released on Too Pure Records on 30 March 1992. The album was recorded at The Icehouse, a local studio in Yeovil, United Kingdom. The first 5000 LPs and first 1000 CDs included demo versions of the album's tracks and Dry was subsequently released in the United States on Indigo Records in the US. Both versions were released in 1992.

Speaking to Filter magazine in 2004, Harvey said of her debut album: "Dry is the first chance I ever had to make a record and I thought it would be my last. So, I put everything I had into it. It was a very extreme record. It was a great joy for me to be able to make it. I never thought I'd have that opportunity, so I felt like I had to get everything on it as well as I possibly could, because it was probably my only chance. It felt very extreme for that reason." [citation needed]

Upon its release Dry received critical acclaim. In a nine-out-of-ten review for NME, critic Andrew Collins called the album a collection of "clever, repetitive, low-slung guitar poems" and said "Polly dredges these sounds from the pit of her dissected soul and drags them out of her mouth with clenched fists."Chicago Tribune reviewer Greg Kot referred to Dry as "jagged, lacerating and sexy in a disorienting sort of way" and likened the album to Broken English by Marianne Faithfull and Horses by Patti Smith; Kot awarded the album three-and-a-half-out-of-four stars, further calling the PJ Harvey Trio "the best band out of the U.K. at the moment isn't another My Bloody Valentine guitar clone". Writing for Entertainment Weekly, Billy Wyman described Dry as a "scorching portrait of the dark side of the female psyche" and an "uncompromising work of exhilarating, cauterizing beauty", awarding it an A+ rating.Los Angeles Times reviewer Robert Hilburn gave Dry a three-and-a-half-out-of-four-star rating, writing that it "falls somewhere in between … an instant classic [and] a seductive calling card that signals the arrival of an extraordinary new artist." Critic Robert Christgau In his Village Voice column described Dry as a "cloudy but essential feminist distinction between egoist bullroar and honest irrational outpouring", rating the album an A-.

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