PJ Harvey: Soto Voce
from METROX Multezine

Polly Jean Harvey has to be considered one of the leading figures in Rock music today. From the raw elegance and experimentalism of her debut album Dry to the hard edged aggressiveness and dynamics of Rid of Me and finally the campy and energetic urban collage of her last effort To Bring You My Love , Harvey has proven her self more than capable of stepping into the male dominated arena of Hard Rock and commanding it with total domination. She is the queen of Alternative Rock, the queen of Hard Rock and the future of popular music, or at least a very big part of it.

Very few women in Rock and Roll are able to pull off "machismo" with the authenticity that Polly Jean Harvey is capable of. The trick lies in the fact that she does not imitate the masculine clichés of rock and Roll, but, rather, she parodies them; twists and bends them to her will; makes them her own. She makes them feminine and real. When you listen to her you do not get the sense that you are listening to a bad female attempt at testosterone driven music which, sadly, is the case with many female Hard Rock bands. No, when PJ Harvey comes through the speakers there is nothing but honesty and raw energy. Lead the way PJ. Lead the way.

But don't get me wrong, PJ Harvey is not all about sounding masculine; on the contrary. PJ Harvey is a master of personas. She ducks in and out and weaves around and about different characters with ease and finesse. Whether she is playing a woman with a sadistic idea of nurturing in Rub 'Till It Bleeds from Rid of Me , Spoofing the male ego in 50ft Queenie ("Hey I'm the king of the world/you ought to hear my song/no one can mess with me/I'm twenty inches long") from the same album, or assuming the voice of submissive victimization as in Dress ("It's hard to walk in a dress it's not easy/...must be a way I can dress to please him....") from her debut outing Dry , Polly Harvey is completely real and realistic.

Her guitar playing and instrumentalism only serves to heighten the experience. She can go from clean and subtle, almost understated bluesy guitar riffs to churning and aggressive powerhouse chords like a wall of noise in the same song; or, as is the case on her last effort To Bring You My Love , she can play in a faux Flamenco style as on the fittingly titled song The Dancer . On To Bring You My Love Harvey goes one step farther and breaks away from the boundaries of her guitar, sitting in on Organ, Piano, and various percussive instruments on nearly every track resulting in a cornucopia of delectable sound worlds that could only be delivered by PJ Harvey. Aided by the production skills of Flood (U2, Charlatans UK) To Bring You My Love has placed Pj Harvey firmly in the world of contemporary rock music and cemented her future.

The idea of experimenting with different instruments is nothing new to Harvey, however. This classically trained violinist picked up the Guitar and taught herself how to play. Two years later she formed PJ Harvey. On Dry there are many song that contain Violin and Cello, and on Rid of Me there is an arrangement of the song Man-Sized for string sextet called, what else?, Man-Sized Sextet in which Harvey plays all the string parts. It is an arrangement that would fit quite well into the world of contemporary classical music. She can hang with Alfred Schnittke any day.

After all is said and done, it would be hard to imagine the musical world without PJ Harvey. She has to be one of the most influential musicians and certainly the most important woman in Rock music today or ever, for that matter. We'll never be rid of PJ Harvey - and that's a very good thing.

--Christopher Allen Berend
Editor/Publisher

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