P.J. Harvey
FROM Spin, January 1996
by Charles Aaron

There's not much precedent in rock music for Polly Jean Harvey. A frail, withdrawn girl born to bohemian parents on a sheep farm in the British countryside, she possesses a sonorous voice of almost operatic force that could stop a farmer in his tracks two pastures away. A former tomboy who claims to feel like neither man nor woman when creating her music, she compellingly impersonates and ridicules the blowhard machismo of male rockers. A reticent young woman whose most memorable character is "50 Ft. Queenie," a gender-bending Stagger Lee who proclaims, "Hey I'm the king of the world / You wanna hear my song / You come on measure me / I'm 20 inches long!" A gifted guitarist who also plays keyboards, she writes all her own songs, then teaches them to a band of all-male sidemen. A hesitant performer who once dressed in austere, boho-femme black and anxiously stared at her guitar, she now prowls the stage in a pink catsuit like a grande dame with a dirty secret.

To Bring You My Love, Harvey's fourth album, is an elegantly harsh song cycle of avant-garde blues for modern rock audiences who wouldn't know Captain Beefheart from Cap'n Crunch (she slyly quotes Beefheart on "Meet Ze Monsta"). Co-produced by Flood ( U2 , Nine Inch Nails , Nick Cave ), the music is an ominous, erotic tango. Snaky guitar, fuzzed-up keyboard bass, organ, violin, and cello fade in and out of the mix, luring you into one shady encounter after another. According to Soundscan figures as of late September, the album had moved over 200,000 units, almost doubling the sales of 1993's Rid of Me. "Down by the Water," the cryptic, swirling first single, unexpectedly climbed to No. 2 on Billboard's Modern Rock Tracks chart. But during a year in which virtually every alternative schmo with a faint buzz crossed over to the pop charts, To Bring You My Love dropped out of the Billboard 200 in just over three months. Other acts stepped in, offering up Cliffs Notes- pop versions of her enigmatic vision -- Alanis Morissette the man-size rage, Björk the eccentric mystery, Elastica the ironic sneer, Garbage the chic flash. But it was Harvey who wrote the book, the Great Novel we'll be rereading years from now.

Even industry tastemakers, usually bound to the bottom line, testify like altruistic public servants when the subjects of To Bring You My Love and PJ Harvey come up. Lisa Worden, music director at radio station KROQ, Los Angeles: "I love her, and all of us in the music department respect her enormously as an artist. So even though we didn't hear 'Down by the Water' as a hit, we were like, 'Just maybe.' We had our fingers crossed." Michael Ostin, a manager of Dream Works SKG Music: "She's a truly amazing artist, combining raw emotion and sensuality with intense, dynamic musicality." Lewis Largent, MTV's vice president of music: "Contrary to popular belief, we are music fans. And sometimes there's a video where you just have to look the other way and say, 'This is important.' Maybe it's not going to have mass success, but it might affect a smaller number of people in a really big way, and you have to have a slot for things like that. PJ Harvey is simply one of the most talented artists of this decade, and you just can't ask, 'Oh, is this going to be like another Lisa Loeb?' "

To Bring You My Love is definitely not about a girl who only hears what she wants to. It's a desperate immersion, full of mythical pleas stripped down to everyday carnal aches and pains. Plunging in formally dressed for divine rapture, Harvey comes out soaked in sweat and voodoo. Consumed by the blues tradition of converting biblical parables into sexual power struggles, she plays all sides -- God, the Devil, Jesus, Lazarus, Adam, Eve -- and repeatedly revisits the serpentine imagery of the Garden of Eden, where boy-girl vexation first flared up. Physical shame, the agony of childbirth, wifely subservience -- all resulted from the Big Man's punishment of Eve's "weakness." And though she refuses to explicitly discuss such matters ("My songs don't come out the way they do because I spend ages thinking about the role of females in the Bible, or blues music, since the year zero"), Harvey's music is shot through with them.

Easing into a plush armchair at the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco's Japantown before two headlining concerts and a couple of days of recuperative shopping, Polly Harvey actually seems quite serene. Seven weeks of hoofing it as opening act for alternative-rock shamans Live are over. After playing 40-minute "PJ on 45" outdoor sets for 20,000 or so unbelievers, the band is once again staging its entire show for her fans. Casually stylish in tight black vinyl pants, a tight white French-cut T-shirt (with a "PJ Harvey" logo instead of, say, "Agnes b.") and no makeup save a smidge of lip gloss, Harvey is as oddly beautiful in person as onstage. She's thin enough to call Kate Moss chunky, but her face is even more uncommon-eyes and lips so expressively oversized that it's like chatting with a Victorian portrait come to life. Blithe and charming one instant, prickly and protective the next, Harvey obviously saves her innermost churnings for her music.

SPIN: Why did you decide to tour with Live, a band you have so little in common with?

PJ Harvey: Basically, it was a chance to put my case forward to a lot of people who never would've heard my music otherwise, and I enjoyed the challenge. I did worry if it was going against my principles to support a band that I didn't have a tremendous amount of respect for musically. But it was quite a good discipline. You have to work very hard and remember you're a very tiny part of a very big picture. It's like, "No, not everybody came to see you and most people couldn't give a toss," and those people over there are chanting, "Get off the stage, we want Live !"

Did playing with Live give rise to any commercial jealousy?

I've got a healthy competitiveness, and I remember a lot of times just standing at the side of the stage, watching Live and watching the audience. To feel that power, that sense of euphoria and love coming back at the stage, it was just overwhelming. I mean, I would never slag off a band like Live, because that's something really remarkable. And yeah, I do wish that I was getting that kind of response, dammit! [She slaps her leg in a fake huff, and laughs.] Maybe one day I'll be lucky enough to stumble across that euphoria button.

Why did you submit to the promotional schlep with this album, playing live at radio stations, performing on MTV's 120 Minutes, doing a zillion interviews?

Until the beginning of the year and this album, I don't think I'd really accepted that this is what I wanted to do with my life. I wasn't happy and I didn't feel like a whole person. Before, I had no idea whether I should be a musician or a veterinary surgeon. Of course, part of that had to do with getting older and sorting myself out, rather than looking to my work to fulfill me.

A number of songs on the new album -- "Down by the Water," "C'mon Billy," "I Think I'm a Mother"-- suggest you've also been wrestling with the maternal instinct.

I'd always thought it was a myth, this inborn biological clock that makes women feel broody and maternal at some pre-designated moment. What a load of nonsense. And then it hit me full-on, this old, old feeling from somewhere back in time. I almost had this new feeling of responsibility. I'll be 26 in a few days and the thought entered my head, actually quite suddenly, that it might be quite a good idea to have children before I'm 30. Also, my brother and his wife just had a baby and that had a huge impact on me. You start thinking that being a parent is a very, very important part of being a human being.

You've always talked about being really unhappy with your body, feeling trapped and confused by it. Have you started to come to terms with that?

Yeah, I've definitely become more comfortable with myself and what I look like, and that's put me at a more stable emotional level to where I could even consider having children. In no way would I have been able to contemplate something like that two years ago. I was still such a confused child myself.

One place Harvey doesn't look the least bit confused anymore is onstage. Unburdened of her guitar, she's free to preside as an unabashed diva -- Patti Smith channeling Maria Callas. At the Warfield, a decadent old movie house in San Francisco's seamy Tenderloin district, she enters to ardent applause. A crinkly silver curtain covers the back wall. A chandelier that appears to be fashioned from costume jewelry sparkles above and to the right. Bathed in a red and green bordello sheen, the stage sits at a dreamy remove. A recorded cabaret prelude fills the room, then guitarist John Parish unloads the crunching guitar riff of "Hook" from Rid of Me . Wearing a black jacket over a baby blue Madonna-like bustier, black slacks, black open-toed heels, and a topknot fall that reaches to her legs, she bangs a tambourine against her hip, squawks "Chiquita! Hey! Hey!" at the microphone, and strolls to the edge of the stage to grin tauntingly at the throng. Even her most devoted fans seem startled. "Long Snake Moan" follows, her voice a precisely sculpted howl.

While just as loudly distorted as any rock show (feedback colors almost every song), the concert's mournfully hushed moments send the most chills. With guitarist Joe Gore (who has backed Tom Waits , and is a virtual human effects pedal), and keyboardist Eric Drew Feldman (formerly of Beefheart's Magic Band and Pere Ubu ) raising a scrim of broody atmospherics, "To Bring You My Love" and "Send His Love to Me" become even more achingly cinematic than on the album. On "Working for the Man," Harvey ducks in and out of the shadows, sings a line, then jerks her head away like a possessed marionette. And on the one-two sucker punch of "Me-Jane" and "50 Ft. Queenie," Gore and Feldman pull out all the stops -- a roar of sirens, theremin wails, and calliope trills so mighty that it recalls the sampled assault of Public Enemy 's Bomb Squad.

Few artists have ever combined the clamorous rush of rock noise with such intimate, theatrical nuance. Risking pretentious disaster, Harvey toys with the diva performance mask, parades it across the stage, then drops it in our laps.

Your band is so instinctively inventive, particularly Joe Gore and Eric Drew Feldman. Do you give them much room to improvise?

During rehearsals, I was very pedantic about them playing exactly what I wanted. But as the tour goes on, the parts very much become their own, so it sounds very different from the record. It takes on six characters instead of one. But it treads a very fine line. I don't like it if I find people putting in bits that shouldn't be there. And I do speak to them about it.

How does it feel to be up there commanding the stage, without a guitar to help you out?

It's almost like staking out your territory, like "This stage is mine, this is my space, and I can go over here or over here or over here and you're not allowed here!" I'm very much stalking my own patch now, creating a you-can-look-but-you-can't-touch atmosphere. It's a very powerful thing to do.

Did you study other performers for ideas?

Yeah, the last week before the tour, I tried to watch whoever was on the telly, a lot of music TV, even if it was something like a Mariah Carey video. I also sort of studied people whose attitude on stage I thought was really cool -- Dylan , Tina Turner , Debbie Harry . I don't have any training in dance or choreographed movements, so it had to be more about an attitude.

The way you're moving onstage now is almost reminiscent of extreme performance styles like Kabuki or drag.

That's probably because I'm just a little overzealous with the makeup [laughs]. In order to sing the songs correctly I feel like I have to live them out in my face in some way.

But you're a such tiny person with such a large face, and in the theater that becomes even more pronounced.

I like the fact that it looks a bit odd, a bit spooky. There's something not quite right there. Because yes, I do have a big head, I admit it. And yes, if you emphasize the big head, you're going to get an even stranger-looking person. Many a time I've been called "Big-Head Harvey" by some of my dearest friends.

Why did you restyle yourself, using the more conventional stuff of "femininity" -- gowns, garish lipstick, eye shadow, wigs?

With the three-piece I dressed very normal and everyday, but I was still very young. I've had to do a lot of my growing up in front of people, which I don't mind at all. But now, it's just a very natural move for me to experiment with my looks and see how that affects my demeanor and performance.

But everything you've worn has been a touch wrong in an extremely stylish way. It's like John Waters's films, how he dressed women in these grotesque outfits, but then treated them like the loveliest creatures.

I actually find wearing makeup like that, sort of smeared around, as extremely beautiful. Maybe that's just my twisted sense of beauty. I'm always attracted to things which are a little bit too much, as you can hear in the music. Certain pieces of music that might seem unsavory or difficult for some people to listen to I might find very soothing. And what you're saying about John Waters's movies, I agree. I think a lot of those women do look exquisite.

Have you ever thought of yourself as dressing up in drag when you dress up "as a woman"?

Oh God, no, not at all! I never, ever wanted to emphasize a sort of drag persona. A lot of that is just me getting carried away with makeup. I did see that movie The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which I didn't particularly like as a story, but their gowns, those outlandish colors shot against the background of the desert, were really gorgeous. It's that combination of being quite elegant and funny and revolting, all at the same time, that appeals to me.

Was that what you were going for in the "Down by the Water" video?

The outfit [red gown, high heels, cherry red lipstick, done-up hair], which we affectionately called "Joan Crawford on acid," came about after a lot of discussion between the director, Maria Mochnacz, and me. I like all the suggestions that arise from wearing something like that underwater, all those uncomfortable feelings it evokes, the uneasiness.

So you're trying to unsettle people with your clothes as well as with your music?

Oh, certainly. I don't want to do anything that's just straight glamorous, like, "Oh, Polly Harvey's suddenly becoming a woman." It has to have some element of uneasiness or humor.

From the topless photo on the back cover of her debut album Dry , to the almost freakishly androgynous tangle of drenched hair onRid of Me, to the video for "Down by the Water," Harvey has consistently kept her audience on edge, balancing a terrible vulnerability with a strong undercurrent of dark humor. Mochnacz, a longtime friend, is responsible for all those images. "When I first met Maria about eight years ago, she'd left art college and was doing her own collage work with stuff from fashion magazines," says Harvey. "It was always extremely funny, but with a hard dig at how things were presented as this beautiful ideal. Her art works in the same way I think my music works." Take the cover of the single "50 Ft. Queenie," with its tableau of a housewife on the brink. Harvey stands against a white backdrop in a red minidress, leopard-spot car coat, dopey sunglasses, gold-strapped shoes, and gold handbag. A can of spray paint sticks out of the bag, barely visible, and behind her, a swath of hastily drawn graffiti reads: hey i'm one big queen. It's exactly the absurd, brash image the song demands. For someone who heedfully keeps a distance between her personal conflicts and her art, Harvey acts out and exposes herself to Mochnacz in all sorts of disquieting ways.

Whose idea was the photo on the back of 4-Track Demos , where you were naked and wrapped in plastic?

That was Maria's; she was really into clear things at the time. We also did these other photos with this strange dress she'd made especially for me that was filled with orange slices. There were these circles of oranges and I was naked underneath and we did a series of photos as the oranges rotted. We never used it. But the photo we did use was even more unnerving. It almost looked like a body bag. But I thought it was quite sad and poignant.

Has she ever suggested something you felt went too far?

Sure. I can recall this one photo session where we were doing close-ups of my arms and it was in a very, very hot room. The veins in my arms were standing up like a junkie's and I was in this beautiful, low-cut top and she wanted to use the photo because of the contrast between the beautiful top and these horrific arms, but I wouldn't do it. I was worried people were going to say, "Oh no, Polly Harvey's a heroin addict!"

Were those photos during a period when you were uncomfortable with yourself and people might've naturally thought the worst?

I think people are always going to think the worst of me. They're ready and willing to cast me into these dark holes, to say that I'm this physically and mentally unstable character. So I have to be careful not to present them with such an easy target.

Physically, you can look quite shocking because you're so frail. Though your SPIN cover [May '95] was aesthetically arresting, you did kind of look like a hospital patient. Do you like to push images like that as far as you can?

Well, no, it's not a side of myself I particularly want to present. I don't want to look like an outpatient.

You've said, "This is the way I've always looked, I've never had an eating disorder." But not too many people seem to believe you.

Well, all I can really say is, again, "No, I'm not ill," and "Yes, I have always been very small in stature." I don't have an eating problem, I'm not anorexic, and for people to even think that I could be and do the kind of work I'm doing, it's crazy. I've just done a year's tour of extremely hard work and if I'd been ill, I would've been on my knees four months ago. I'm a very healthy person and I do a lot of exercise and I feel extremely well, [she slips into an affected, drama-queen voice] she said forcefully with her pot of Advil by her side. I'm absolutely fine! You must believe me!

Maybe people persist in thinking something's wrong with you because so many of your songs have agonized over your body and its desires.

Like, ohmigod, why am I being tortured by my vital bits! No, I don't think that was it at all. Though I may have given that impression in past interviews, I was always very happy and excited about becoming a woman. Having grown up around only boys, it wasn't until secondary school, when I was about 11, that it dawned on me that I would quite like to look like a girl now, and have boyfriends like everyone else. But I still looked like a boy more than a girl, until much later. I wasn't against maturing, I just wanted it to happen faster.

Did developing more slowly confuse you psychologically?

Well, I've always been very hard on myself, partly because of that, I guess. At school, I was a really hard worker. Then, whether I was at art college [Yeovil Art College, in her hometown] or in the music business, I kept that competitive drive. I'm very, very competitive. I want to be as good as I can possibly be, and as a result, I'm very self-critical. So I guess there is a connection, but I don't feel comfortable talking about it.

You've said, as recently as a couple of years ago, that at times you felt like humiliating yourself to keep the audience off-kilter, as a means of self-protection.

I think, generally, I was pretty mixed-up for quite some time and I'm still getting over it now and I've got quite a long way to go yet. It's very hard to talk about and I don't think I want to talk about it, really. What you're referring to was a combination of things --a sense of disgust with myself for being so emotionally unstable, anger at myself for being so unbelievably stupid, and at the same time, being repulsed by everyone's pity. I get so fed up with this angst-ridden, pitiful artist nonsense; it's just not the truth. Of course, everybody gets stress and tension, and unfortunately, right now all of mine is going straight to the side of my neck [she moves from her chair to the sofa]. I get these awful cricks. But I'm no more mixed-up than you or anyone else; it's just that I express it through music, so all these people hear about my problems.

Do you think you'll ever have a less apocalyptic view of love and sex?

But, you see, I don't. People always zoom in on the doom-and-gloom sex-queen stuff. 'She's got a lot of problems, mate,' that kind of thing. But there's a helluva lot more going on in the music. Of course, people are going to be drawn to that because I'm a young woman. But there's so much goodness in love, so much goodness in sex, which I feel really optimistic about, and I think that's in the music.

I guess if you didn't believe in the goodness of love, you wouldn't yearn for it so sincerely again and again.

But I'm really not yearning for it a lot of times. I'm celebrating the fact that it's there. And that's quite a big difference. It's been there for me in the past. I've had it. And I know I'll have it again.

Like Bob Dylan --one artist in her pantheon of heroes -- Polly Harvey is so fascinating because she's so restless, so difficult to pin down. You hear her constantly scaring up new tactics, both musically and emotionally. Fluttering her fake eyelashes, delicately pantomiming rubbing her belly while whispering "Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water" in the video for "Down by the Water," she offers up image after image charged with sexual desire. Yet nobody ever calls her sexy. It's desire, rational or irrational, pleasant or unpleasant, that is her subject. While other performers craft ambiguous personae, Harvey just is, a woman with the face of an ageless Broadway goddess and the body of a scant teenage boy. Flipping the script on Muddy Waters 's "Mannish Boy," she comes on like a Mannish Girl, hiding twice as many tricks up her sleeve. And dealing with twice the consequences.

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