| Stones in my Passway- PJ Harvey Gets the
Blues Dorset, England, and the Mississippi delta are thousands of miles and a revolutionary war apart. Still, country is country, and driving down narrow, hedgerow-lined roads through the fog-shrouded fields where Polly Jean Harvey grew up, the blues makes sense in a way that's not understood by the average, mustachioed American bar band. As exotica, yes- to a girl with a mind as active as her tomboy body, songs about levees and juke joints must have fueled fantasies of far-off lands. But more to the point, I hear the blues as solitary music- voices from deep inside individuals explaining how the world makes them feel: lonely, angry, happy, horny, or just plain sad. People close to the earth are close to their feelings, says a wisdom Harvey espouses. She grew up on her parents' stone quarry- literally, a cottage industry- near the border separating Somerset and Dorset counties, three hours southwest of London. It's a 10-minute drive through winding stone fences, past grazing sheep and centuries-old houses built from the local hamstone, and over a reservoir to the city of Yeovil, a Twin Peaks-sized burg where Harvey recorded her first album. After a brief stay in London during which she became a music-weekly cover star, Harvey high-tailed it back home. She's now settled into a house in a nearby coastal resort town where cliffs drop down to sandy beaches and the locals socialize at lively pubs. When Harvey sings that she's "forsaken heaven" on the title track of her new blues-powered album, To Bring You My Love, she's scarcely exaggerating. Still, if this is Eden- and despite the typically gray, damp, cold English weather, I'm willing to believe it is-PJ was looking for an apple, to be "queen of everything" as she sang in her Paradise parable "Snake" on 1993's Rid of Me. The new album, her third as PJ Harvey but first without bandmates Rob Ellis and Steve Vaughan, is full of longings: for adventure, for illicit passion, for romance, for love. But Harvey is hesitant to talk about the details of her songs, preferring to let them speak for themselves. Practically the only explanation she offers about the new record is, "I find a lot of the songs in need of...and then a blank space, question mark, what is it for the song?" PJ hates interviews. "I'd love to sit here and have a conversation with you if it wasn't for an interview." she says graciously, sitting at a local pub. "But being in this, in the back of my head I'm always thinking it's going to be written down. I hate thinking like that. It's so unnatural and uncomfortable. I'm really looking forward to getting to a point where I don't have to do interviews anymore, whether that's through reaching a certain level musically or I stop playing music." Harvey should know by now that you can return to Dorset, but you can never go home again; once you've left the womb, you're gone. And there are few things as tiresome as listening to rock stars complain about their fate and the evil media. After all, nestled against the pub wall, Harvey stands out among the plain-garbed locals with her jet-black mane and layers of black clothing. She's striking-looking by nature: if physiognomy is destiny, then her large, dark, luminous eyes would never have been content with a lifetime of gazing at moors; that wide mouth with the elastic lips was meant to fill theaters with sound. Besides, Harvey admits that "before having the opportunity to move around, I did feel trapped." To Bring You My Love is full of the loneliness and longing that only isolation, or abandonment, can bring. On "Send His Love To Me" she sings, "This house becomes a tether, this room becomes a cell." On "The Dancer", one of several tracks with a Spanish influence, she dreams about a gypsy figure come to take her away, like a character in a Springsteen song. Of course Harvey was never as passive as the Mary of Bruce's "Thunder Road", and she engineered her own escape from small-town boredom. Initially she tried to sneak out under others' wings; as a member of the local band Automatic Rhimini for two-and-a-half years, she toured Europe at age 18. But when record companies passed on that band's material, the group dissolved, and Harvey- having just switched from sax to guitar because "I wanted something I could sing along with"- began playing with Ellis and Vaughan. A few gigs around London quickly established the buzz that grew like an out-of-control lab experiment. By the 1992 release of the group's debut, Dry, London's music weeklies were scrambling over each other to get PJ on the cover; her bare-chested appearance on the New Musical Express added fuel to the fire. For once the British press found and artist worthy of its hyperbole. On Dry Harvey sings in her big, bluesy voice- no indie-rock little-girl warble here- while the thunderstorm trio of instruments makes the Pixies' crash-and-fade dynamics sound like a passing shower. With lyrics about wearing dresses, menstruation and fertility symbols, Harvey voices real-life female experiences with refreshing bravado. An almost religious passion drives the album. On "Fountain", PJ describes washing at a fountain when a wind, "a big bone-shaker," blows off all her clothes- "What to do when everything's left you," she wonders. Miraculously, a silent man covers her with green petals, stays a wordless 40 days, then leaves as mysteriously as he came. She sings for his return, over and over: "On my hill I wait for wind." Driving over Ham Hill, Dorset's rolling moors from which hamstone is quarried- the part of England Thomas Hardy made famous, and near the area where Camelot was legendarily based- I picture an adolescent Harvey lying in one of the fields of sloping green grass, imagining that the breeze blowing up her clothes is her savior. Unfortunately, Harvey found that fame and city life didn't bring the fantasized deliverance. Even if she sat at one point chafed against confines, Harvey comes from a supportive and protective environment- her parents listen to Captain Beefheart records and book blues bands at a local inn- that gave plenty of latitude to her dreams, her energy, and her musical ambitions. Harvey wasn't prepared to find herself constantly judged- as one is in a city, whether or not you're an up-and-coming musician- even if most of the appraisals were positive. I found it a bit of a shock, because that had never happened before. And being in London there was no escape from it, or hiding from it," she says. "That was all very difficult for me to handle." City guys were apparently not the Prince Charmings she'd hoped for either; songs like "Sheela-Na-Gig," in which a woman's lover accuses her of being an exhibitionist for being free with her desire, skewer the sexism her sexuality encountered. Harvey was running into the brick wall of being a woman- a condition a tomboy childhood had heretofore deferred. She has described how adolescent bodily changes puzzled and frightened her. On "Sheela-Na-Gig" she refers to breasts as "dirty pillows" quoting from "Carrie". "Well they look exactly like that, don't they?" On "Dress", she describes the dizzying experience of wearing a dress for the first time. "as a result of being the only girl in the village, all I had to play with was boys, " she says. "I thought they were wonderful. I wanted to be just like them. I used to wear trousers and pee backwards and all, everything that happens to tomboys. I remember clearly when I went to secondary school, standing in the dinner queue and getting told off by the headmaster for not wearing a tie. I said to him, 'But I'm a girl, I don't have to wear a tie.' And he said, 'Oh, sorry.' It was at that point, when I used to have trouble going to the girl's loo without people saying get out, I thought I'm going to have to start looking like a girl and doing girl things." Flak over the NME picture, as well as the attention her nude appearance on the back cover of Dry garnered- from lechers, prudes and feminists alike- exemplified the censorious attitude she hadn't anticipated. "I was very surprised when all this happened. I thought, 'What is this fuss all about?'" she says. "He was taking pictures of my back and I had the vest on and my friend said, 'I think it would look better if he could just see your back.' And so I took off my vest and we did the pictures. It taught me a lot, really, that everybody wants to read so much into every single thing that you do; even if you do it in the most naive of ways and innocently, it's going to get things put on it. I don't think it's changed the way that I do things- I wouldn't ever want it to either, because then you're being influenced before you even create something." The phenomenon of being perceived in unfamiliar ways by thousands of strangers made the previously sheltered singer self-conscious. "Coming from a small village like I do, and then when you're moving into a bigger world, where there's a lot of people around, you start to think, 'Oh do I fit in? What do I look like compared to these people?' Not having a lot of confidence in yourself either, just being a shy sort of person, you need to kind of reassure yourself that you do look all right: 'No, you haven't got a bogey hanging out of your nose, you haven't got a bit of food stuck there.'" Such hyper-awaremess of image has made anorexia an occupational hazard for women in show biz. "Maybe a couple years ago when I hit the rock bottom period, I wasn't eating well then. But that was linked in with feeling mentally and physically at the through in my life." Some articles have decribed Harvey as having had a breakdown in the spring of '92 as attention on her increased. She denies it: "I think I became extremely tired and drained and unhappy. I wouldn't call it a nervous breakdown." She took a break from album promotion and moved back to Dover. "That was probably the major healing process." Harvey rebounded with her second album, the appropriately titled Rid of Me ("You're not rid of me/I'll make you lick my injuries," she taunts in the title track). She deflected any efforts at making her a pop star by recording with the irascible Steve Albini, who amped the bristle in Harvey's guitar and added spit, no polish, to the band's rough sound. On the disc, Harvey posits herself as a "50-ft Queenie," standing majestically over puny contenders to the cock-rock throne and well above the hype surrounding her. She issues challenges and dares with a smirk, singing, "I might as well be dead, but I could kill you instead," "I'll rub it 'til it bleeds," and ultimately, "You leave me dry." By the time the band toured for the album, Harvey had decided it would be the last time she would work with Vaughan and Ellis. She says not that she never intended to play with them for long, although up until then "PJ Harvey" had been presented as a band. "I've always felt like a solo artist really," she says. "The whole change in band was something I knew would happen. I've always know that I want to work with different musicians for what they can bring to the songs. " That fall, Island released the demos for "Rid of Me" as a new album, most of the band's musical indeed began with Harvey. But "4-Track Demos" scarcely prepares listeners for "To Bring You My Love". Produced by Harvey, Flood (U2, Nine Inch Nails), and Automatic Rhimini leader John Parish, the record is a sonic masterpiece, a dark, sexual album full of whispered tales and passionate pleas. Like Jon Spencer's Blues Explosion and Come, Harvey is clearly under the influence of Nick Cave's postpunk blues; Bad Seed Mick Harvey plays on a couple tracks. But PJ's blues knowledge runs deeper- from all those nights at the inn listening to the bands her parents brought to town- and she leavens her dramatic allegories with more humorous self-awareness than Come and less irksome post-modern irony than Spencer. Plus, she's a more mesmerizing songwriter than Diamanda Galas, her closest contender in that arena. Harvey's prolific too. "A lot of my favorite songs didn't make it to the new album. We recorded 20. But I knew I wanted to do a 10-song album. I was adamant that that was what it was going to be. I think albums are too long these days, and I get bored after 40 minutes, quite honestly. I really don't want to get bored with my own album." Many of the songs are blues tropes, about going down to the water, or sleeping with the devil; the amazing "Long Snake Moan" bears a direct resemblance to Ledbelly's "New Black Snake Moan". Like previous discs, the album again has a deep religious current; the title track describes Harvey making a Faustian pact, while on "Working for the Man" she portrays a agent of the Lord. In perhaps less overt ways than before, she also continues to explore her power and position as a female. On "C'mon Billy" and "Down by the Water", she expresses the burdens of motherhood that can bind women and separate them from reckless mates. "Long Snake Moan", like previous songs "Man-Sized" and "50-ft Queenie" takes a poke at phallic power, as Harvey casts herself as a voodoo queen, as aggressive and commanding as any man. With purposely distorted vocals, film noir strings, and a burring, throbbing bass sound that keeps the music rumbling in your groin (it's Harvey playing the low-end keyboards), To Bring You My Love is a bristling, textured album, as noisy as an Albini record but produced with more finesse. "With Steve it was done in a very short period of time, so we didn't have the luxury of spending time on things and getting them completely how we wanted," she says. "We didn't have time to sit back and think about something- 'Has this got the right essence?' And so I would let things go that I wouldn't do in a situation like this last record, where we spent six weeks on it. I was able to do just what I wanted to do this time." Although Harvey's albums, with their rich palettes of musical ideas, have made her the rare female begrudgingly lauded as a musicians' musician, PJ feels less comfortable in the studio than onstage. "I wouldn't call working in the studio enjoyable, but you learn such a huge amount- about yourself, about your songs, about music, everything," she says. "It's a valuable process, and very necessary and important. It can be uncomfortable and unpleasant, but it can also have moments of complete ecstasy and real wonderful highs." To Bring You My Love was the first album to represent Harvey's intentions purely, unhampered by democratic band principles. "I was very much the boss woman this time and didn't have any qualms about being that, because, after all, I am at this point. It was quite enjoyable getting what I wanted out of people." Those people included Tom Wait's buddy Joe Gore, who plays guitar on several tracks, although the album is primarily Harvey and Parish's work. "I based everyone that I worked with on this record from knowing them as people foremost, and knowing that I really liked them. And then the fact that they also played instruments was an added bonus," she says. "I work very intuitively and instinctively; 'If I feel comfortable with this person I'll work with them.'" Harvey seems to depend on that personal approach, that one-on-one contact. Austere and formidable as her increasingly gothic appearance is, she looks homey and comfortable tucked behind the table at the inn. Twice she waves a friendly hello to other patrons. "I've only gotten good feelings off people 'round here, and support," she says. "I think people feel really proud of what I've done. They're ecstatic when anything's on the telly, and we'll all get together and watch MTV in the pub, and they'll be laughing at me and say, 'Did you swear there? Did you wear that outfit?' It's a very healthy kind of attitude." "The people I know are people who've known me since I was 10 or 11, and they treat me just the same. I'm just Polly. And people know that you don't particularly want to talk about that kind of thing anyway. So when I go to the pub we usually end up talking about farming or something like that, or what they've been doing. I suppose because such a large amount of my time is spent doing it, talking about it- music,music,music- when I'm relaxing it's the last thing I want to talk about. It can be very insular; you're going up your own backside sometimes. Even doing things like this. I'm talking about myself, but I'd much rather talk about something else." True enough, she deflects the conversation from her music and career several times, at one point suddenly telling me about her garden: "I've got some good brussels sprouts at the moment." She even quizzes me at the interview's onset: "How old are you? Are you married? How long have you known your fiance? Do you have kids?" She seems to want to talk girl-to-girl, as though she's interested in my experience as a slightly older (I'm 30, she's 25) bohemian-type woman. But I also get the unnerving sense that she's checking me out. "I can immediately tell if I do not like someone, and I won't work with them," she says of how she had chosen the players on the new album. "It's fairly in-built from growing up in the countryside. This sounds very hippieish, but I think you're much more in touch with your feelings, because you're dealing with what is around you. A lot of the time the people from around here are farmers, they work with cattle, with sheep. You're directly involved and you live off the earth. It is much more based on that instinctive and intuitive kind of living. When I have to spend a lot of time in London, it's just a very different level, a surface level. Harvey's fear of interviews isn't news. What is news is how she's surrounded herself with mystery on the new record as well as in person. Having literally made herself naked on previous albums, she cloaks her emotions in personal songs on To Bring You My Love. Instead of singing about being "Happy and Bleeding" upon the sight of her menstrual blood, she tells strange stories about looking for lovers under bridges, or about guys with exotic names like "Teclo". But Harvey denies that she kept a protective veil over the songs because she was tired of past probings. "I feel as close to these songs as I have with any songs, probably closer," she says. "and they feel very much a part of me. They came from inside me and I didn't consciously create some other story to tell. They all came from things I feel." "Making music and writing songs to me has always been a very personal thing. Really it's just an airing of what I feel, it's my outlet to get stuff out of myself that needs to be got out, otherwise it will just kind of fester away and it won't do you any good." She pauses ominously. "sometimes I think I don't really want anyone else to hear it." Full of respect for Harvey's talent, I nonetheless begin to lose sympathy for her repeated complaints about success. Yet I'm also sensitive to the psychic toll music-biz pressures can take on sensitive souls; we all just got a huge wake-up call at that number, after all. Harvey says she's still "hollowed out" by Kurt Cobain's suicide. "A lot of why I felt deeply upset by it is because of the low point I had reached at that time, and knowing what a struggle it is constantly between the music and the industry side of it, the business side, the money side. Knowing how it has been for me, and then imagining what it must have been like for him- which was 100 times greater- I could see why he would have got to that point." What alarms the ardent feminist and fan in me is the fear that by making herself a Kate Bush-style recluse Harvey is actually caving in to those pressures. Her craving for domesticity is understandably human, but has disturbing implications for those of us eager for brave examples. "It has to do with what we were saying about getting older," she says. "You feel like there are lots of other things that are important in life, things that are equally as important or more important. You have to readjust the balance a bit. Up until now music's been the most important thing. But I'd like to be able to spend more time at my home, which I haven't really had time to do. I want to settle down [she starts to laugh] and have a family. I want to make cookies and cakes and do the washing and ironing and painting and decorating." Harvey laughs because she knows such wishes are neither quite genuine nor possible. Persephone-like, she's made her deal: She gets to spend half of her time trying to be a real person in Dorset, half in the hellish maw of the recording industry. But she admits it's not so bad. "I've got the most balanced head on I've ever had. I'm coping pretty well. Yeah, maybe I'll want to carry on making records for another 10 years- who knows?" Evelyn McDonnell writes for various publications including Rolling Stone and the Village Voice. This is her first story for Option. |
