SOURCE: The Rocket * No, 205 * May 17-31, 1995
COVER: ATTACK OF THE 50 FT PJ: PJ Harvey Meets the Monster
ARTICLE: PJ Harvey and the Cycle of Success

Polly Jean Harvey's mother chisels gravestones out of the rock her father cuts from a quarry. The same resilient stone forms the outer walls of the homes in the rural community where Harvey grew up and still lives. These odd, somewhat macabre crafts bind her parents, and, in a peculiar sense, explain why the music of PJ Harvey so aptly reconciles love and death. It's a natural process--in order to live one must die and love always leaves, regardless of its depth. Life belongs to the fearless, or rather those respectful of nature and her cycles.

Although she once contemplated becoming a sculptorlike her mother, Harvey chisels her work out of a different raw material. She lies at the soul of PJ Harvey, which is a band, not a person, kinda. It's an Alice Cooper thing. Harvey writes the songs, sets the tone and chooses exactly who is going to be in the ensemble on each album. There probably was a stable line-up when the small British indie label Too Pure released their debut, Dry, in 1992, but since Harvey had the bulk of the talent, not to mention charisma, things changed.

It was Harvey who posed in the buff for the cover of New Music Express that same year, and, considering the line-up changes, it was also probably Harvey who signed with Island Records shortly thereafter. Her 1994 release, Rid of Me, garnered her a cult following. With the recently released and much-hyped (she's been on the cover of almost every national American music rag) To Bring You My Love, Harvey reigns as this year's media starlet. Remember Liz Phair? Some stars are born despite themselves. Harvey stands among them. "When this first happened I felt really scared," says Harvey. "I felt underdeveloped and I thought, 'God, I'm not ready for this.' But you come to terms with it and you learn how to deal with it."

She seems content to let her career chart its own course. As a child, the uninhibited country bohemian recieved music lessons from visiting bluesmen booked by her mother, a part-time promoter. She traveled to a club in the nearby town of Yeovil, england, to catch indie acts as a teen. Eventually, she joined her first band, Automatic Dlamini, which included John Parish, who plays a myriad of instruments on To Bring You My Love. But Harvey yearned to put her own craft forth, so she started PJ Harvey. It seemed the natural thing to do.

Like most country folk, Harvey posesses an inate awareness of the cycles of nature. Her bluesy songs buzzsaw like the poetry of Robert Frost. Both writters divulge the brutality of the nature--in Harvey's case the natureof love--beneath her serene landscape. Yet, despite its violent character, a rural lifestyle keeps one rooted in what's real. "I've not spent a lof of time in the city," says Harvey of how her work reflects her environment. "I don't know if I'd write differently if I were there. I know I'd be quite a different person. I only write from my own experience and I've always lived in the countryside."

In 1994, after she had recorded Rid of Me in Minneapolis, Harvey retreated to the bucolic region outside Dorset, England, the closest farming village to where she grew up. Surrounded by her beloved countryside, her parents and her small rural community where people know her simply as Polly Jean, she wrote To Bring You My Love.

After her present tour, Harvey states she plans to stow still further away from the spotlights, which she finds a bit too glaring, and the glamour at which she excels, but finds laborious. Media-shy and fiercely private, Harvey successfully wards off the pressude accompanying fame and a cult following. "I find that quite easy to do," she says. "A lot of that is being at home, being near my family and taking it easy when I'm not touring. That keeps everything in perspective which is one of the most important things in not letting it get to you."

That and the fact that she appears unabashedly uninterested in maintaining a high profile; something the flashy side of her private nature garnishes without effort. Harvey seems more concerned with honing her craft than bathin in the glory of an unnatural spotlight. It is, of course, what enables her to make the music she does.

Once a record hits the streets, Harvey allows it to take its own course. That became evident on the punky Rid of My when she shoved her love in our face and proclaimed, "You want to know my song. You come and measure me. I'm 20 (and it grows to 50) inches long." The alternate sarcastic/macho posturing/mocking which Harvey spattered all over her first two releases is gone on To Bring You My Love. Sometime during the past two years, Harvey came to terms with her gender and the way the world interprets it. "I kind of relinquish my control the second the record goes into the shop these days," says Harvey. "You just go crazy if you try to make everyone's interpretation like you want it to be. I'm quite happy for people to take what they want from it. It's kind of like giving back something of what I'm getting out of it."

Rather than a wall of fearful punk swagger, To Bring You My Love, swims with images of water and motherhood. People generally slap a reading of abortion on the first single, "Long Snake Moan." But one could also easily interpret the allegory as a story about a miscarriage, the female soul or perhaps her heart. After all, Harvey does wail Ï lost my heart...I had to lose her to do her harm.I heard her holler/I hear her moan/My lovely daughter/I took her home." The song is obviously about reclaiming something.

Harvey's choise of producers further reflects her trnasormation. Gone is the rage and control-freak nature that came with the production of Steve Albini on Rid of Me. Harvey brought in Flood, most noted for his work with U2, and Nine Inch Nails, to produce To Bring You My Love. The spirit of the album lies far from the peace of U2, although it echoes with the same depth of sound. "I chose to work with Flood because I like the kind of space and sensativity I'd heard on a lot of records he'd produced," says Harvey. "After the way some of my songs turned out this time they needed a lot of delicate handling. I had a lot of space for them and I think Flood has definately brought that to this record."

To Bring You My Love is not an album of reconciliation, but of the process of heading towards it. It drips with torture, desire and impatience but these emptions are expressed as an internal struggle rather than the exploding outward anger found on Rid of Me. The despair on To Bring Your My Love equals that on the previous releases but the reaction to the circumstances are different. Rid of Me screams "I feel"; To Bring You My Love states "I am."

"I think the difference between the albums is quite obvious in the music," says Harvey. "I'm two years older as a start. It's amazing how much a person can change in a very short time. Just being two years older, I've seen a lot more things. I've experienced more things. I've come to terms with a lot more things. It's in the whole albu. There is a lot more depth to it. I think that Rid of Me was a lot more tunnel visioned. It's become a lot wider."

What belts her lyrical and musical transformation with extra impact is that Harvey studies opera during the past two years. Her voice, always strong, now wrenches fresh nuances out of her words. She studies twice a week while at home. "I wanted mroe strength in my voice particularly for touring,"explains Harvey. "But I became more interested in opera as an art form in itself. I became fascinated when things started to go right and I was able to sing things I wasn't able to do before. I just think it taught me the way singing a word can change its meaning. I see the voice as my primary instrument these days rather than the guitar. I'm playing around with it and seeing what sort of capabilities it has but it totally amazes me how you can turn a word on its head just by the way you sing it."

One listen to the album indicates that Harvey views love as a state of vulnerability-filled rage, passion and fear. In a way, she almost playss the self-sacrificing victim on To Bring You My Love. She walks the fine line between daring to feel emotion and obsession. Occasionaly, she slips.

The images of water that appear throughout the release not only reflect motherhood--a concept referred to both litarally ("C'mon Billy") and allegorically ("Long Snake Moan")--but of emotion as well. "Monsoon" actually defies an emotional storm by asking it to sweep her along. But that goes with Harvey's choice to live in a rural community. "You defninately have to approach life in a different way," says Harvey of living in the country. "It is pretty obious when you spend time in the city that the whole attitude of people is so different. I feel a lot more in touch with the earth and elements when I'm in the countryside. To a large extent you rely on those types of things. The weather is very important. If you get snow where I live you can't go anywhere for quite a few days and that sets things back in the right sort of balance for me."

The To Bring You My Love tour runs through January, thereafter, Harvey plans to do something else, perhaps something a bit more for herself. Like rotating crops, it prevents leached soil. "I'm going to take some time off," she says. "Time off for me would be exploring some other areas to work in. I'd love to go into music for film, whether that's singing or whether that's composing my own music for film. We'll see what happens."

After all life belongs to the fearless, or rather those respectful of nature and her cycles.

transcribed by Steve Lewis, May 1995

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