Sunday evening proved to be the perfect night to meet ze monsta that is Polly Jean Harvey. A sell-out crowd greeted the English singer and band with a roar of welcome and expectancy, and left an hour and a half later disappointed only that the show wasn't longer. Taking the stage in support of her new record, To Bring You My Love, Harvey displayed a subtle and new-found theatrical bent previously absent. Turning guitar duties over to John Parish and Joe Gore freed Harvey to slink around the stage, drape herself over monitors and generally play the vamp. "I can now perform the songs in the whole sense of the word 'performance,' using my whole body to articulate the words and the emotions," she told WW during a recent interview from the road. High emotion is Harvey's stock trade. Her first two releases are bawling, brawling records fraught with bluesy, high-voltage guitar work and intense vocals. Though she once sang "Fruit from myself inside out/I'm happy and bleeding for you," Harvey rejects the line as a description of the performer's task. "I perform because I love doing it and need to do it," she says. "I love being able to give something to others that might inspire them to do something or feel something. It's not always a painful experience, it's quite joyous." And although the characters in her songs often find themselves in dire straits, Harvey says she doesn't have to be anguished in order to write. "I think it's a load of rubbish that youhave to suffer for your art," she says. I fell a lot of joy and laughter in my life, but [when songwriting] I'm drawn into things that upset me, things that I need to look into further." With To Bring You My Love, she has maintained her trademark intensity, even as she has gotten the guitar off her back, literally and figuratively. "I definitely find it very restrictive physically in terms of singing," she says. "It's a burden and I couldn't sing as well as I wanted to--all your breathing apparatus is squashed. I was also tired of it sonically. You can play it very delicately and subtly, but I was tired of the guitar sound all the time and wanted to try some different textures and different sounds." Harvey's new music has a lighter, more conceptual touch than her earlier work. Sunday night, her five piece band, featuring keyboardist Eric Drew Feldman (Captain Beefheart, Frank Black), duplicated the record's polychromatic arrangements, with aplomb. Bass player Nick Bagnall proved especially versatile, switching to accordion on "C'Mon Billy," one of three new songs that deal with the subject of motherhood (the single "Down by the Water," also performed Sunday, is another one). "I'm not aware particularly that I've been getting more concerned with the idea of motherhood," Harvey says. "I kind of just let the songs go where they want. I don't direct things too much. It's something that I'm learning to do better, to lay yourself open and let the songs write themselves." Harvey laid herself open for an audience that was stridently vocal, but surprisingly stationary for most of the night. "I very much operate and work off the audience," she notes. "I'm performingfor and to them. I'm doing it for myself, but I'm taking them with me and I relate to them very much. I'm not one of those people who hide under a fringe." Not by a long shot. Over the years, her visual persona has alternated between thinly veiled nudity and a campy brand of dress-up. The latter prevailed Sunday. A slip of a girl, Harvey strutted around in a floral print slip, made up to the nines in blue eye shadow, ruby red lipstick and heavily blushed cheekbones. "it's always been very important visually how the images are looking," she explains. "I'm interested in heightening the music, making it even more powerful. But the music is the most important thing. I can perform wearing a sack cloth or a reddress and loads of makeup as long as the music is there." There was no doubt Sunday. Even with guitars in check, Harvey masterfully awed the crowd--thanks to pipes ripened by opera lessons--with a set that left almostno room for old favorites. When the guitars were uncaged as well--on "Meet Ze Monsta," "Long Snake Moan" and a goosebump-producing "50 Ft Queenie" that nearly shook the building off it's foundation--the crowd perked up, demanding and winning an encore, only to be disappointed three songs later when the house lights came on. With her music getting widespread airplay and audiences leaving her shows hungry for more, Harvey is on the verge of a major breakthrough. Would mainstream success come as a pleasant surprise, or a major pain in the ass? "It would probably be a pleasant surprise," she says. "I obviously would like that to happen, but I'm not going to be devastated if it doesn't. I'm pleased with vast or small numbers, I really just want the respect--that's the important thing." She surely earned that Sunday night --Tim Casebeer |
