"The brilliance of Rid of Me is in the vividness and detail with which it captures that Boschian panorama using only blues rhythms, loud-quiet-loud dynamics, Harvey's voice (and sometimes that of Ellis, whose falsetto and status as a backup singer constitute additional instances of gender subversion), and an arsenal of extreme characters and loaded allusions. It was that rich, strange, deliberately alienating picture that Harvey attempted to reproduce, not flawlessly but unforgettably ...".