P.J. Harvey

Polly Jean Harvey (from a rural village in Southern England) is one of the few British singer-songwriters of the 1990s to experiment with self-expression by soulful means instead of sophisticated production tricks, and, ideally, she belongs to the American folksinger generation of the 1980s (Tracy Chapman, Suzanne Vega, Michelle Shocked ). However, her work also draws on the great subversives of the country and blues tradition (Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neil Young). Although she was heralded by the British press with great fanfare, as if she were yet another ephemeral "next big thing," Harvey immediately established a very strong personality as a songwriter and especially as a performer (in fact, this would soon alienate her from the very media that had launched her).

Dry (Too Pure, 1992) is a set of very personal (and often perverted) songs, that sounds like the soundtrack of a nervous breakdown. Harvey displays the skills of an emotional performer (closer to the blues than to the British folksingers). The prevailing theme is female sex, that she discusses frankly in songs that her angry tone transforms into bleak and cold reportages of daily life. Overall, the angst-ridden blues of Oh My Lover marks only a slight musical improvement over what Lydia Lunch was doing ten years before. No doubt the band rocks (Dress, Sheela-Na-Gig) but she almost drags them down with her poor vocal performance. In Victory and Joe Harvey is a poor imitation of Jeffrey Lee Pierce to her band's Gun Club country-blues fits. Mostly, Harvey's voice (which is not a pub-proof soprano) drowns in the power-trio's bacchanals. Harvey forces the band to swallow her lyrics and riff/drum along. A cello steals the show in Plants And Rags. It would take an army of PJ Harvey's to make one Hope Nicholls .
Harvey is but a little more scabrous than the American "riot grrrrls", and has a few million precedents (Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde of Pretenders, Sinead O'Connor, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth, Throwing Muses). The elliptical lyrics (as in the ode to menstruation of Happy And Bleeding) complete the suggestion. Harvey's soul struggles between pleasure and pain, affection and libido, frustration and desire, and ultimately expose a psyche that is metaphorically nymphomaniac.

Rid Of Me (Island, 1993) set the singer among the pantheon of great British eccentrics, but Harvey arrived there under the auspices of Captain Beefheart, albeit a Beefheart warped by an inexhaustible source of pain. Where verbal eloquence drove the songs on Dry, it is harmonic ferocity that now drives screeds like Yuri-G, Man-Size, and 50ft Queenie to the very limits of hard rock. Harvey's singing is even more raw and vulgar, plumbing the depths of despair in Rid of Me, Dry and Rub Til It Bleeds. The only element that hasn't changed are the lyrics, which are the usual variations on the sexual theme.

The original versions of these songs, before Steve Albini disfigured them, were released on 4-Track Demos (Island, 1993).

To Bring You My Love (Island, 1995), which owes a good deal to producer John Parish, is actually a blues album that has the virtue of laying the singer's soul bare through quasi-mystical metaphors of pregnancy, alongside the flaw of embellishing her music (even using synthesizers). The sinister crooning of Down By The Water, the funky, dub filler of Working For The Man, and the orchestral melodrama of C'mon Billy do justice to the affectations of the first album, but too many of the songs sound like rip-offs of the same. Always dominating is her chameleonic register, at one moment Captain Beefheart in hell (Meet Ze Monsta), at another Patti Smith in heaven (Send His Love To Me), but her voice has lost in personality what it has gained in professionalism. Instead, the lyrics are more raw and intimate than ever, and that seems to be the true essence of her art. Harvey, in her ever-changing voice and style, seems above all else like she wants (needs) to exorcise her sexual demons.
The pounding blues-rock of Long Snake Moan and the solemn gospel of the title track are unrestrained aphrodisiac rituals.

Dance Hall At Louse Point (Island, 1996) was a collaboration with John Parish, the musician who produced To Bring You My Love. The songs are composed by Parish and Harvey only lends her vocals.

The follow-up to My Love took some time to materialize. When it came out, Is This Desire (Island, 1998) made it clear that Harvey's musical evolution was irreversible: another labyrinthine production job increases the doses of electronics and downplays the role of Harvey's voice. Her power is often reduced to populating atmospheric landscapes.
A bit of the old angst surfaces from the chaotic noise of Joy, from the syncopated boogie assault of The Sky Lit Up (with echoes of Patti Smith), from the hammering jump-blues of A Perfect Day Elise. The problem is that, on top of their artificial quality, most songs last barely long enough to sing the refrain.
Harvey fares much better with a spare ballad like Angelene (a touch of Pretenders, despite a Pink Floyd-ian organ), with a subdued blues like Is This Desire and with the Lied for piano and chamber orchestra The River.
Vast areas of the album are occupied by clones of the previous album's Working For The Man, by amoebic stains of funk and dub like The Wind; but Harvey as a pop-soul queen or a chic Bjork is a poor surrogate of Harvey the existential toilet.
The intriguing aspect of these settings is that they can be very minimal, as in Catherine and Electric Light, or very hypnotic, as in The Garden. For better or for worse, Harvey is unrecognizable.
Most of the album she only whispers. Her voice is hidden in the texture, as if she was suddenly ashamed of it. But Harvey is not much of a vocalist, and her voice must be filtered eletronically to produce an appealing register. Harvey sounds more like a spectator than a protagonist in her own music.

Following a dark and obscure record with a warm and personal record is sign of maturity. Returning to the format and sound of her first album is a sign of reflection. Big Exit begins Stories From The City (Island, 2000) with her trademark passion, but free of the hysterical edginess, and, instead, modulated to a Lou Reed-ian boogie. Good Fortune follows suit, unveiling her best Patti Smith imitation ever while jangling guitars add drama to her recitation.
Then, the artist sinks into a melancholy stupor, into a series of quiet meditations on life and pain: A Place Called Home (a brisk shuffle oddly reminiscent of Fleetwood Mac's chanteuse Stevie Nicks), the tenderly nostalgic One Line, the feeble blues Beautiful Feeling. And her elegant phrasing is full of Bjork-ian inflections.
When Radiohead's Thom Yorke intones This Mess We're In, one hears echoes of Chris Isaak's plaintive country-pop.
It is not too surprising that the winner is the most traditional number: the majestic, waltzing You Said Something, that could become a staple of Nashville's country singers.
There is one moment of real tension, The Whores Hustle, a boisterous harangue delivered on aggressive guitars and pressing rhythm, and one moment of frenzy, Kamikaze, a breakneck pow-wow dance that she screams out of her mind. Strangely enough, This Is Love roars like a southern boogie (almost lifting the melody from Georgia Satellite's Keep Your Hands To Yourself).
This is the first record on which Harvey is not ashamed of her (limited) vocal means, and uses them for what they are and for what she is. No longer an icon, she has become a human being.
The closing track, in fact, may point to a completely different future: We Float is a nocturnal, piano-driven lounge ballad, sort of a dance remix of Tori Amos or Jane Siberry.
Moored to a more conventional song format, Harvey has lost 90% of her power. A lion in a zoo, pacing the cage stately.

Polly Jean Harvey plays all the instruments (except the drums) on Uh Huh Her (Universal, 2004), but the album is her worst, being damaged by quite a few embarrassing moments. Even whe she parodies herself as the angry young woman she used to be (Who the Fuck?), you are not sure you want to hear more of this. The folkish numbers, such as The Pocket Knife and No Child Of Mine, are the only reason to own this album. But thousands of albums are released every year that contain songs as good as these or better. This should have been an EP, or it could have been saved for a compilation of rarities.

The short White Chalk (Universal Island, 2007), the most haunting album of her career, is mostly scored for voice and piano. After all the raw energy of her punk-inspired youth, this calm and lugubrious album, drenched in a cloister-like atmosphere, feels like the musical equivalent of a existential middle-age crisis. Harvey has never been gifted as a tunesmith, and, left alone with a piano, is wise enough not to even try to come up with catchy melodies. She goes for the pure emotion and succeeds a few times (The Devil, When Under Ether, The Mountain) if not always.

A Woman, A Man, Walked By (Island, 2009) is a collaboration with producer John Parish, varied but rarely competent (hundreds of musicians are doing more interesting things in whichever style she fumbles with). Basically, one feels that this is the collaboration between an artist (Harvey) who has lost any inner spring to express primal anger and a sound choreographer (Parish) whose job is to simulate that primal anger of yore (Pig Will Not, Black Hearted Love, A Woman A Man Walked By) but too often the task is just superhuman (and result is resigned litanies such as Passionless Pointless).

Let England Shake (2011) is a concept about England as seen through the eyes of patriotic soldiers. Harvey, wearing the hat of the historian and the tv commentator, solemnly celebrates the decline of her mother country blending the mythological impetus of ancient folk music, the poignant anger of protest punk music, and the eclectic orchestration of pop music. The result is a calm, catchy and seductive work (especially The Last Living Rose, Written on the Forehead and Let England Shake), almost the exact opposite of the ghostly White Chalk.

The Hope Six Demolition Project (Island, 2016) is a concept about her world journeys.