PJ Harvey |
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Thu. June 17.2004 12:00 AM EDT |
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P J Harvey: Hymn to HerThe new disc is both fierce and eloquent. Polly Jean talks about people watching, the fear of repeating herself, and the ancient art of letter writing. by C. Bottomley |
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(Island Records) |
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What does Polly Jean Harvey do when she's not scaring the wits out of her audience, howling vicious laments about love gone wrong? Well, she likes to eavesdrop. She's captivated by people - what they look like, what they talk about.
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Harvey's been deemed the rock equivalent of an Emily Bronte heroine. Listening to her wrenching music, you imagine her in some tattered Victorian dress, stalking the coast near her home in Somerset, England, bemoaning her eternally broken heart. But P J Harvey has never really been the same person twice. When she plays a New York gig to promote her new album Uh Huh Her, she's wearing a strapless dress that's printed with a picture of the sprite-like singer as she was in 1992, when she released her first album, Dry. Shod in clunky Doc Martens, with sulky eyes and a severe hair bun, she looked back then like a girlish goblin sent to sit in the corner. With each album, however, she's shed her former image to emerge a different woman. There was the drowned vamp of To Bring You My Love, the backwoods blues-woman of Is This Desire, and finally the chic heroine of Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. The music has changed with her. If Dry was mutant feminist rock, Stories wallowed in joyous melodies and urban excitement. "I never want to repeat myself," explains the 34-year-old. "That is my biggest fear." And that is why Uh Huh Her might be her best record yet. It's wounded, abrasive, exultant, and even wryly funny. Working on her own, she shed Stories' pop designs to let her songs stand or fall on delicate acoustic arrangements ("Shame," "The Desperate Kingdom of Love") or sleazy riffs ("The Letter," "Who the F*ck"). The new disc also presents us with another array of Harveys. On the first single, "The Letter," she teeters on the edge of total abandonment as she commands a pen pal to "wet the envelope with your licking." There might be more going on here than mere correspondence, but the singer lovingly describes letter-writing as a lost art. "I am terribly old-fashioned in refusing to have a computer or email or a mobile phone," she says. "We seem to be losing that whole tactile human quality, with the letter being a prime example. You can tell so much about the way a letter was written when you receive it, the way the person had written on the paper, the pressure that had been put there, the paper that had been used, the way they had written your name ..." Pressing a hard nib to pliant paper isn't the only way the act of love is presented on the new album. "You Came Through" is a humble tribute to Harvey's late grandmother. And on "The Darker Days of Me and Him," Harvey moans despondently, "I long for a land where no man was ever known." "I'm endlessly interested in exploring love," she admits. "It seems to be the thing we humans need the most. A lot of write-ups say I seem to hammer on the same subject, like 'bad love,' or 'love gone wrong.' With this album, I think there is a lot of celebration of it – and not just male/female love. The song 'You Come Through' is more about friendship for me than anything." You could forgive Harvey watchers for being confused. They said Stories from the City gained its ebullience from the singer's rumored romance with New York actor/musician Victor Gallo. But the downbeat air on new songs like "It's You," or her description of the way she plays her man's answering machine message on the squalling "Cat On a Wall," makes Uh Huh Her seem a million miles from its predecessor. Harvey assures she had no intention of making a sequel to the million-selling Stories. If that album was a series of narratives; Uh Huh Her could be called a collection of fetishes. "I'm definitely an artist that always challenges myself with new things," she explains. "[On the new disc] I became very interested in specific objects being something to hang a universal song onto, from something as specific as writing a letter or a pocket knife." She also decided to make the album entirely on her own. Aside from Rob Ellis' percussion, Harvey played and produced everything on Uh Huh Her herself. "I was at a time in my life where I felt confident enough to carry it through. But not only am I critical, I'm indecisive, which is the worst combination! That was the hardest part. Some days I would get tired and wish I could have someone to lean on, to tell me what to do." There's one more part of Harvey which comes to play in her art – the student who seeks constant self-improvement. In the past, she's taken classes in sculpture and African drumming. While making Uh Huh Her, she studied flamenco dancing. And lately, to increase the eloquence of her songs, she's been doing a lot of prose writing. Student, one-woman band, lover, loner - eavesdrop on Harvey and you'll find plenty of her selves to scrutinize. Back when Stories was released her one great hope was that listeners could identify with her music and, instead of wondering what it was that made her heart run, would understand their own lives a little better. Has she achieved that goal? "I feel I have a little bit, but I'm still a long way off," she says. "That's what keeps me going: to do that in a clear and direct way. Some people do that for me – Dylan, Leonard Cohen ... they can tap into the absolute source immediately. I would like to be able to do that myself, but I don't think I have got there yet." How will she know when she does? "I think I'll know," she smiles. "I can judge that." |
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