Harvey, PJ

PJ HARVEY

Born: Polly Jean Harvey; Yeovil, England, 9 October 1969

Genre: Rock

Best-selling album since 1990: To Bring You My Love (1995)

Hit songs since 1990: "Down by the Water," "Good Fortune"

British singer, guitarist, and songwriter PJ Harvey began recording in the early 1990s. Her first albums, recorded with a small band also called PJ Harvey, combined powerful, punk-influenced rock with brash, confrontational lyrics. With her 1995 release, To Bring You My Love, Harvey smoothed some of her music's rough edges. She exchanged the brutal honesty of her earlier lyrics for an expanded sense of storytelling and fantasy. In 2001 Harvey was awarded Britain's Mercury Music Prize (the first woman to win since its inception in 1991), confirming her status as one of England's most respected performers and songwriters.

Polly Jean Harvey grew up on a sheep farm in the Dorset village Yeovil. Both her quarryman father and artist mother were music aficionados who supported her musical education: first saxophone and later guitar. In Yeovil, Harvey played in a series of bands, including Automatic Dlamini with longtime collaborator John Parish. She eventually founded PJ Harvey in 1991 with bassist Steve Vaughn and drummer Robert Ellis. Two albums later she parted ways with Vaughn and Ellis and she has picked up additional collaborators over the years, including bassist Mick Harvey (also of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds). She and Parish continue to work together, a relationship that culminated in their joint release Dance Hall at Louse Point (1996). Harvey maintains a home near Yeovil, returning there after extended absences, and continues to describe herself as a country girl. Many find her persona in interviews—polite, charming, and quick to laugh—radically different from the characters she inhabits in her music.

The PJ Harvey Trio

The stripped-down textures of PJ Harvey's first album, Dry (1992), cannot hide the ensemble's tight rhythmic center, propelled by Ellis's often polyrhythmic drumming. The song "Dress" is one of several tracks to feature Harvey playing cello. In her hands, the instrument, generally used in rock to offer a mellow bass line, adds to the music's agitation and forward momentum. Harvey did not shy away from displaying her body on album covers early in her career—a tactic she later characterized as a publicity stunt. Song lyrics on Dry also focus on the female body, as in "Sheela Na Gig," which begins "look at these my child-bearing hips, look at these my ruby-red ruby lips."

PJ Harvey's second album, Rid of Me (1993), continues to explore the musical terrain established with Dry. Rid of Me was produced by American Steve Albini (best known for recording rock group Nirvana's In Utero ) whose intense dynamics focus the trio's sparse instrumentation. His precise use of microphones on the drums accentuates Ellis's work. The first track, "Rid of Me," alternates frenetically between intense whispers and ferocious guitar outbursts. It concludes with Harvey demanding "lick my legs, I'm on fire, lick my legs, of desire." Her lyrical focus on the body reappears throughout Rid of Me, including "50ft Queenie," where Harvey establishes her power by declaring herself "fifty-inches long."

From Dorset to the Big Apple

After the supporting tours for Rid of Me, Harvey shed her band, and has since reconstituted it in a variety of forms. The cover of her next album, To Bring You My Love (1995), announces Harvey's new incarnation as a heavily made-up vixen in a red satin dress. Whereas Dry and Rid of Me made Harvey a critic's darling but not a financial success, this album found a larger audience, and the single "Down by the Water" was nominated for a Grammy Award. In this song Harvey becomes a mother drowning her daughter, singing, "I heard her holler, I heard her moan, my lovely daughter, I took her home." Harshly plucked violins in the background add to the creepy and stylized experience of the song. In the album's relatively lush arrangements, Harvey develops and explores her characters in greater depth.

Following the success of To Bring You My Love, Harvey returned to Dorset for an extended self-exile. Her next creative project was her collaboration with Parish, Dance Hall at Louse Point. Both Parish and Harvey contributed creatively to the album, which successfully deflected critical attention from Harvey's follow-up to To Bring You My Love. Two years later she released the cryptic Is This Desire? (1998) whose illusive songs turn so deeply inward the listener must struggle to find its narrative and musical center.

After years in the English countryside, Harvey briefly relocated to New York City in 1999. The result was her release Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000), which reflects her experiences of living in both New York and Dorset. Many songs on the album reproduce the rapid tempo and excitement of booming late-1990s New York City. Lyrics are full of references to the city, including Chinatown and the Empire State Building. Ellis plays on many tracks, reuniting Harvey with the pounding rhythms that gave her earliest albums their rhythmic ferocity. The video for "Good Fortune" (perhaps her most optimistic song) features a chic Harvey rapidly progressing through the city's streets, embracing yet distinct from the world around her. Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea radiates a happiness absent from earlier albums. Even its darker ballads, such as "The Mess We're In," sung by Radiohead's Thom Yorke, maintain an element of hope.

While none of Harvey's records have made it into Billboard 's Top 40 in the United States, many know and admire her work as a singer and songwriter. She has fared better on the charts in Britain. Her first two records remain visceral landmarks of female expression, while To Bring You My Love established her range and brought her voice to a larger audience. Her millennial release, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, assures the listener that everything could end up okay, in the end. Harvey has produced few direct musical ancestors, she has never belonged to a scene, but she has profoundly altered the rock landscape with her powerful songwriting and performances.

Spot Light: To Bring You My Love

PJ Harvey initiated a major change in her music (and image) with the release of To Bring You My Love (1995). Formerly a rough, punk woman on stage, she became a torch singer. Like other torch singers before her, the new Harvey sang of relationships gone dangerously sour, and of holding onto hope beyond any chance of redemption. She appeared in concert made up much as she looks on the album: deep-red lipstick, red satin dress and an elaborate hair-do. Although Harvey's lyrics have always explored other characters and narrative positions, To Bring You My Love further destabilizes Harvey's position as the speaker. Indeed, Harvey fills the record with mothers abandoned by their lovers and children. In "C'mon Billy" she assumes the role of a woman pleading the father of her child to return. "C'mon Billy," she sings, "you're the only one, don't you think its time now, you met your only son?" Harvey's musical language also deepened with To Bring You My Love. She abandoned the pure rhythmic intensity of her earlier albums. Instead, songs acquire their drive and intensity from Harvey's vocal lines and her sense of musical form. Despite the central role of her singing in these songs, Harvey often distorts or otherwise estranges her voice, further distancing herself from the music she sings. Her consistent use of organ throughout adds a new timbre already culturally marked as serious and sad. This musical language expresses Harvey's new persona in ways unavailable in the terse rock songs of Dry and Rid of Me.

SELECTIVE DISCOGRAPHY:

Dry (Too Pure, 1992); Rid of Me (Island, 1993); To Bring You My Love (Island, 1995); Is This Desire? (Island, 1998); Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (Island, 2000). With John Parish: Dance Hall at Louse Point (1996).

caroline polk o'meara