According to a thing I read on the internet and can't find the link for, Steve Albini claims that Polly Jean Harvey ate only potatoes with sauces during the recording of Rid Of Me.

Elsewhere I'd heard that you can live just on potatoes indefinitely, although you'd be really unhealthy. This knowledge is what really spurred my love affair with the potato.

The album sounds like that potato diet, to me. Just scraping by, unhealthily and nervously. Thin-sounding, although not tinny. Like... I didn't really catch much of a distinction between the album and the 4-track demos. The difference, as was explained to me, is that the demos have no rhythm section. No bass, no drums. Rid Of Me- it's just this vicious little scrawny thing of a record, and it subsists on potatoes, and it's fucking great.