Polly Jean Harvey
from Les Inrockuptibles, http://www.francenet.fr/inrock/
Interview by Emmanuel Tellier

Will O' the Wisp, or if you prefer, Lively Fire

Full of wisdom or just a tease, career artist or star as imposing as she is accidental: which is the real PJ Harvey? After _To Bring you my love_, the magnificently monstrous album from the beginning of this year, and on the verge of a French tour in reinforced form, Polly Jean Harvey, often few in her words, accepts one last interview.

Sherborne: etymologically, place of light. There's irony in the name of this village in Somerset, a few kilometers from Yeovil, birthplace of Polly Jean Harvey. The inhabitants of the neighborhood have been deprived of light for three days, their little corner of England covered in a thick black rain. But in Sherborne, like in Yeovil, no one would think to curse the sky: life follows its course, humidly. Draped in a big white coat, PJ Harvey pushes the door of the café with the punctuality of people from here. With a fixed look, eyes softer than in photos, she states the rules of the game, terribly adult for her 25 years: "We are together to speak of my music. The rest, I don't care about." It's necessary, then, to cheat a bit.

ET: You had moved to London. Why did you come back to the countryside?

PJH: My life is here, in Dorset, near my family and friends. This area is my refuge, all my guidemarks are here. When I'm on tour, I spend hours thinking of my home, of the fields, the sheep, and the trees. I miss them, and it hurts. Here, I like to be alone. It's in those moments that words begin to flow. And I need this kind of atmosphere to work on writing, to feel fully bloomed. When I'm not writing, I feel useless, unproductive. For a long time, I had a boyfriend, but our story has ended. Honestly, I'm not suffering for it: I do very well all alone.

ET: The general tone of _To bring you my love_ is more relaxed, less tortured. How do you explain that?

PJH: I've had some pretty hard moments in my life, but I came out of it more mature, happier. The foundation of this happiness is what I'm proud to have been able to change, to no longer be the eternal angry young girl. I have a few more years of it, but I feel calmer, more of a "woman." The spirit of _To bring you my love_ is therefore more positive. I've turned a page, closed the chapter of anger and frustration. I've never felt as strong as I do today. Even leaving to go on tour for months doesn't frighten me any more because I know the songs from the album will carry me through. On stage, I can now concentrate entirely on the songs, which I feel I've sacrificed a bit these last few years. I'm flanked by six people: musically, the responsibility is entirely on their shoulders.

ET: In closing the chapter of anger, are you going to now accept the game of promoting?

PJH: As a promotional date nears, I feel ill at ease; I want to escape by running. I think this feeling will erode with time, that I'll become more cynical and therefore more conciliatory, but nothing will change this: this promotional work taxes me enormously. I don't like talking about myself, about my life. I'm afraid to make things that are after all spiritual - inspiration, faith, passion - theoretical. Talking for hours can't be good for me, it does a lot of damage. So I'm going to cease to accept meetings and retrench myself in silence, cut myself off from journalists - that's necessary. In fact, this interview is probably one of the last that I'll agree to. I'll continue to write songs, of course, but without any hint of promoting them. All these questions about my life, my childhood, my education, tire me, weigh on me enormously.

ET: Difficult to talk music with you: you're systematically disappointed by your albums.

PJH: For the first time in my career, I'm really satisfied with on of my albums. _To bring you my love_ satisfies me, as much as by the songs as the sounds. It's a very new feeling for me, eternally subscribed to frustration. It makes me even more happy that I never believed I would arrive one day at this state of completeness, of total satisfaction. And to be on tour with my new musicians excites me. My old group was too rigid, and I began to hate its stability, its comfortable qualities. For each piece I had to compose one part percussion and one part bass, never let Steve or Rob do it. It became an unbearable dictatorship - so I dissolved the group. With my new musicians, I rediscovered liberty, the absence of rules, the right to have fun. I can do it all, invent new arrangements. For the first time in my life, I feel perfectly free.

ET: How to avoid falling back into a routine?

PJH: I've already made the decision to separate from the group at the end of the year, after the tour. I believe strongly in the virtue of change, of starting again. I never want to have to fall back on the classic recipe: percussion, bass, guitar. There's so much to do outside of that square, so many fantastic instruments to integrate. From the first day, things were clear between my new musicians and me: I write the songs and all the arrangements, and they're paid to play them. PJ Harvey is my group, not theirs. Our relationship is therefore very healthy, there's no ego problems among us. By the end, relations with Steve and Rob had become very complicated, they wanted more say. The only solution, then, was to put a end to our collaboration. I'm perfectly aware of owing them a lot: without them, _Dry_ and _Rid of me_ would have been very different, maybe less sharp, less rhythmic. But even without them, those albums would have been released. Let's be clear: I've always been the boss in the heart of the group - and now more than ever. Now that I've tasted this total freedom, I don't know how I could give it up. I don't imagine myself working with a group in the classic form or in collaboration with another songwriter. I no longer want to have a creative link to anyone.

ET: You had planned, though, to work with Bjork.

PJH: For her, I'm ready to make compromises; she is so strong, so passionate. I've become friends with Bjork and Tori Amos. We stick together, we call one another, we hold each other up. It's important and reassuring to know people who have lived through the same things as you have. Between us, we call ourselves the "Strange women" of rock. We have the same demands, the same desires for total freedom. What comes before all my musical education, is all these jazz albums I listened to during my teenage years. I'm very grateful towards my father and my friends: they've known how to show me new musical directions, the side paths. And so I began studying music by playing the saxophone, an instrument which allows everything, without strict rules. What would have I become had I started by percussion? With _To bring you my love_, I wanted to get away from guitars, to look other places. So I wrote for piano and keyboard, which gave me access to a totally virgin universe of melody. With the piano, no proven recipe, nothing to follow that was one thousand times repeated: I rediscovered the range of possibilities. This is why the songs of _To bring you my love_ don't resemble those of my preceding albums. I think the piano will occupy an essential place in my creative future. It's a marvelous instrument. I also want to extend my study of synthesizers and samplers. I'm very attracted by all of this technology, by all the possibilities offered. If _To bring you my love_ is a calmer and more poised album, it's evidently because _Rid of me_ pushed it a little further in the other direction. I don't tolerate the idea of balance. For me, I have to keep advancing, keep questioning perpetually. Don't go imagining that that applies to my private life. On the contrary, I am a very steady person, who hates stirring up things, the constant questioning. My music and my love stories don't resemble one another.

ET: In what ways is _To bring you my love_ your best album?

PJH: I don't like the sound of _Dry_. At that time, we held to the idea of live recording, like a group on stage. That was a mistake; the songs merited more than being treated in such a rush. For _Rid of me_, it was even worse, as Steve Albini refused all ideas of arrangement, only to keep the dry and surly framework of the songs. Today, I feel as if the songs were sacrificed. With _To bring you my love_, I switched for the first time to classic recording, track by track, instrument by instrument, as if I had installed a four track recorder in front of me. For the first time, I could work at my own pace, without rushing it, taking care of the details. Emotionally, the recording of _To bring you my love_ was one of the most absorbing experiences of my life, I left it exhausted. I spent whole hours concentrating before I was able to confront the microphone. I had so many emotions to rise, so many things to put into this album. But Flood is a fantastic guy, a very sensitive producer, very much psychological. He knew how to talk to me when it was necessary, and in the same way when to be quiet. The atmosphere of this album owes him a lot. Flood knows how to organize tons of seemingly insignificant details, like the intensity of the lighting in the studio, the placing of the spots. A light bulb doesn't seem like much, but it can change a lot on an album.

ET: The lyrics of _To bring you my love_ are rather surprising. You're uncovered in a new light: tender, romantic, fragile.

PJH: Don't look for specific autobiographical indications: my songs are rarely specific. They are the reflections on twenty-five years of existence, not of what happened to me last night on the street. Those on _To bring you my love_ are mostly vague love songs, about the feeling of love itself. If I wrote them for someone, I wrote them for myself. To do me good, to reassure myself. I need to sing about these types of things, to express strong feeling without which I would fall into anger, hate, or rage. My angry songs aren't any more specific than my love songs. The lyrics of _Dry_ were tied to an age, a very specific period of my life - the end of adolescence, the passage to adulthood. I sang about my fears, my anguish. But that page is definitely turned. I'd like to pass to another way of writing, more compact, longer. To write a book would be exciting. But before releasing it, it would have to be perfect - not just "pretty good." I rarely forgive artists who feel obligated to try their luck in an other domain than that which they have proven themselves. I don't imagine exhibiting my paintings in a fashionable gallery in Kensington. I'm only qualified to write songs. I feel so much respect for my fans that I don't want to abuse them. I'm so proud of them, proud of their diversity. At my concerts, forty year old guys mix with sixteen year olds. There's no typical "PJ Harvey fan," no prevailing gender. And there seems to be a deep respect for me. I don't know what I did to merit this respect, this moral support, but it's very precious to me. While I sing, people stay calm and concentrate, they don't jump in all directions like idiots, don't come up on stage to catch me. One single time, a guy jumped onstage and threw himself into my arms. The audience acted rather strangely, it felt as if they were furious at this man, that they wanted to make him pay for such behavior. I found this experience very frightening, but I felt supported by the audience.

ET: Have you ever felt that your image escapes you, that it was manipulated by the media?

PJH: I've always had the feeling that I've perfectly controlled the situation. Evidently, at my debuts, certain photos have lent to confusion. But I affirm perfectly, no one ever made me wear one outfit or take off another. I've also been reproached for complaining about my physical appearance, for being whiny. But it's true, I've had difficulty considering myself as an attractive person. I've always found myself mediocre - and simply approaching the subject puts me terribly ill at ease. I don't trust people who talk to me about my charms.

ET: When you're not in the studio, how do you spend your time?

PJH: I read a lot - two or three books at a time. It's nourishing, a daily need. I spend a lot of time in front of the television, watching videotapes. I need to swallow tons of things, to nourish myself intellectually. It's the only way to feed my inspiration and to bring myself to write. In my songs, I give a lot of myself, so I need to take back some energy in instructing myself. However, for six months, I haven't listened to music. I already knew this genre of fracturing, it doesn't interest me. During the writing of _To bring you my love_, I didn't feel the need to listen to others. Only my own songs interested me. One of the few albums to have passed through is the one by Portishead. I was excited by this group, by the sound of Dummy, the voice and the lyrics of this girl. I've spent the last weeks accompanied by this album.

ET: Your peaceful country life is a bit contradictory to your artistic attempts - to innovate, to take risks.

PJH: I need these aspects in my life. On one side, the calm of the country. On the other, the fury of touring, the decibels onstage. I couldn't give up one or the other. I think that if music didn't occupy my soul, I would have a hard time living here, among the country people. I would no doubt want to escape, to leave for the city like all the young kids here.

ET: You just bought a house. Is it a symbol for you - the passage into adulthood?

PJH: This house made me terribly responsible. If there's a leak in the roof, I can't send up my father to fill it in. My principal problem is arranging things: I have a mania for collecting, piles of useless things - my house is literally filled with knickknacks. I live in the middle of the country, a few kilometers from the sea. I don't have any neighbors, the closest houses are several hundred meters away: I pass sometimes three days without seeing anyone. When I come back from a tour or from the studio, I return very quickly to earth, feet in the mud: hardly out of the car, I have to go put on my boots, shake hands with the people here, as if my artistic life didn't exist. I need this contact with the earth, with hard work, hands in the mud.

ET: You've always had a plan. Do you have any projects in mind right now?

PJH: For the moment, I feel emptied of all creative energy. I just finished recording, and I don't have the strength yet to think of the next. I don't know if I will have the desire or the need to record another album. There's still a year, frustration will make me keep going. But now, where do I find the energy to progress? Before, I always had parts of songs ready to work on. When _Dry_ was released, _Rid of me_ was already completely written. I don't function like that anymore. I think the well dried up, that it will become more and more difficult for me to keep going. Today, I have a few ideas in mind, not really songs. I'm going to have to be patient, not worry too much about it. But I won't force myself to write at any cost: forced exercises do very little for me. If a year from now this need to write doesn't come back, then I'll put an end to my career. What good is it to keep going? To keep the heritage, a source of money? I'll see how I feel a few months from now, after this album and this long tour, I'll see if I can still tolerate this. For the first time in my life, I'm thinking of my own future. There are so many other things to do in life, so many other occupations that could bring me identical happiness. Would I not be happy slaving away in a café?

Translated by Majenta.

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