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REVIEWS
FEELINGBURNED @FORUMZ
Fantastic show! Polly is a one-woman band, G-d love her.
Vincent Gallo was sitting a few rows behind me and during the pre-encore applause he and his two guy friends (one who very much resembled Eric from Hole) were the ONLY ones who remained sitting. *Which made them stand out even more. And personally, I thought it was kind of shitty and a very LA celeb too-coolness moment.
But the show was grand! The audience was swooning over Polly all night. "My Beautiful Leah" was a highlight for me (pj swinging her hips and shaking what G-d gave her plus the banging of the cymbals). "Angelene" was amazing. Vocals were fantastic. The sold-out crowd was crazy for her.
Let me add, Polly and her stagehand (She said his name on stage--was it Ian--I forget) seem to have all the switching around she does with instruments and equipment down to a science. It went so seamlessly and was so organized.
GOOGLYMINOTAUR @FORUMZ
This was, hands down, the single best concert I've ever seen. I know it sounds like hyperbole, but I've never witnessed anything like this before. I've been to tons of shows by tons of artists and I can honestly say I've never been so blown away.
The setlist was amazing, perfect, beautiful, rocking, sweet, sad, scary, joyous, fun....every damn emotion I can think of. It hit all the right places in the most sublime way.
Polly looked lovely. Her dress was badass. Her hair was the shit. Her whole body moved with the music and the vibe.
And her guitar playing (and piano playing as well) was just un-fucking-believable. She hit that fucker with such force sometimes that it sounded like a full band. Her sense of dynamics is so spot-on and she kept it just the right amount of soft and hard (a noteable example was "To Bring You My Love", which was the opener. Holy god in hell that song was fucking tight. So fucking tight. She rocked it so hard and sang it so beautifully. I'm getting shivers just remembering.)
The new songs were great and some of them reworked. "The Devil" had a cool metronome and her voice on that song was just other-wordly.
There's more to say but I'm tired. What a great night. What an amazing performer and songwriter. Anyone doing music today should take note of PJ. She's just a damn genius.
SEASINPHONY @FORUMZ
I have to agree with everyone. It was seriously one of the best shows I've ever been too. She seemed a little nervous at first but she definately warmed up to the place and the audience after she played "when under ether" she commented on how beautiful the theater was and referred to the two huge hanging chandeliers as "the most beautiful pair of eyes I've ever looked into" I was on the front row and so my experience was just superb, the sound was amazing and her dynamic range never ceases to amaze me. She's just beautiful and I walked out knowing this is for damn sure one of the best shows I'll ever experience.
SCHVIMMER @FORUMZ
Like many my age, looking back over the 15+ years I have followed Polly, I always come away from every concert incredibly touched, moved, and always amazed that she can continue to inspire me..I mean, how many artists can do that on a personal level - for so long? The show was both elegant and rocking..something I feared wouldn't happy since I love all the different PJs..The set list, as someone mentioned, seemed perfect - and yes, highly polished - and it flowed nicely. Polly seemed relaxed, calm, and perfectly pleased to perform for her loving fans - I am used to seeing her during various long tours, and I truly noticed a much fuller, more refreshed vocal range - she never sounded better, maybe also due to where we sat (up front) and the sound system at the magnificent Orpheum. Leaving her show was the hardest part - who wanted this to end? The few common friends we always meet at her concerts are forever worrying - Is that it? Do we have to wait another _____ years for another chance to see Polly? Rumors point to maybe not touring White Chalk..I hope the loving audience from last night convinced her otherwise.
JIMIJAM @LJ PJHARVEY COMMUNITY
PJ's solo show at The Orpheum Thatre was wonderful. PJ sounded great, looked stunning and smiled a lot. She also looked like she was having fun. The show was intimate, emotional and rocking all at the same time. When she played electric guitar...she rocked the house and you didn't even miss the fact that there was no band to back her. I've seen PJ seven times during the years and this was by far her best show ever. In fact, this show has now become one of my top 5 concerts of all time. Did I mention that I sat in the 2nd row center and had a great view? And to top that all off, I shook Trent Reznor's hand from NIN right after the show. Trent's a PJ fan. Awesome.
ADAM2 @THE GARDEN FORUMS
PJ was very relaxed and SMILING, and looked very happy in her white dress as she bantered w/ the crowd. She went back and forth from guitar, to piano, to autoharp. She single-handedly performed all of "My Beautiful Leah" with keyboard, drum machine and crash cymbal. All of the eras were pretty well represented except "Dry" and "Stories..".
HEATH BITER @LAIST
PJ Harvey made a pitstop last night at the Orpheum, playing one of only a handful of shows to promote her haunting new album, White Chalk (review here). I knew this was going to be a special night when a scalper actually paid me face value for my extra ticket.
On entering, the sparse stage seems to echo the stripped-down nature of the new record. A keyboard, a cymbal, an autoharp on a chair, two small amps, and an upright piano adorned with Christmas lights and various knickknacks are assembled in a small, intimate circle.
This is the first time in memory that PJ has played a true SOLO show with no additional musicians. The performance is no less powerful as a result. Through all her various incarnations, PJ’s always been a compelling performer, and tonight is no different. Everything that makes PJ Harvey such a vital performer is here in full force – Her masterful dynamics, her ability to challenge expectations, and her talent for reinventing herself.
PJ takes the stage to rapturous applause, clad in a white Victorian gown similar to the one she’s wearing on the new album cover, only this one has several song lyrics stitched into the sleeves. She jokes that it could come in handy if she forgets the words to any of the songs.
In a sharp contrast to the depressed persona she embodies on White Chalk, PJ seems practically giddy. Throughout the 75 minute set, she smiles a lot, dances from one instrument to the next, and seems positively chatty. She engages the audience in conversation, asking when the Orpheum was built, and having the house lights turned up so that everyone can admire the theater's beautiful chandelier.
She straps on a Firebird and opens the show with a chilling “To Bring You My Love”. She follows it with “Send His Love To Me” before heading to the piano for a trio of new songs, “When Under Ether”, “The Devil”, and “White Chalk”. Her piano playing is rudimentary, and I mean that as a genuine compliment. When she adds harmonica to the coda of “White Chalk”, it nearly sounds like a Neil Young tune. Laid bare(r), the songs resonate on a truer emotional level. Vulnerable, but not maudlin.
She spends the entire evening flitting from one instrument to the next. “Down By The Water” and “Grow Grow Grow” are both reimagined on the autoharp. The latter suffering from the thin arrangement. She plays a beautiful version of b-side “Nina In Ecstasy”, after introducing it as one of her favorite songs, and wondering why she left it off of Is This Desire?
Despite the intimate mood and setting, this was not an entirely quiet concert. The setlist was peppered all the way through with raucous favorites, such as “Man-Size”, “Water”, and first song of the encore, “Rid of Me”. Each is played loud, and delivered with all the ferocity that you would expect from a full band arrangement. She barks and snarls her way through a nasty “Who The Fuck?”, and “Snake” is a blissful 90 second burst of pure punk pathos.
For the final song of the evening, PJ sits with an acoustic guitar, and plays a soft, soft “Desperate Kingdom of Love”. It’s so quiet, that the vocals are literally competing with the hum of the PA speakers. It’s a stunning, potent ending to an awe-inspiring evening.
ANN POWERS @LA TIMES
THE piano that PJ Harvey played during her solo show Monday at the Orpheum Theatre was adorned with homey things -- a family photo in a frame, some kind of plastic stuffed animal, holiday lights, a metronome. What rocker keeps time with a metronome? Harvey used it only once, as a kind of acoustic drum machine, on her new song "The Devil." But this art-rock queen of the meaningful scream is not given to empty gestures.
That little order-keeper belonged to the world Harvey animates on her just-released album, "White Chalk." So did her bone-white concert gown, scrawled over with song lyrics, and the piano itself, deconstructed to expose every hammer hitting every string as Harvey, new to the instrument, labored to play it correctly.
Monday's set list spanned every dynamic shift of the 37-year-old Englishwoman's 16-year career, from early tirades such as "Rid of Me" to her mid-career re-imaginings of myth and murder balladry. But Harvey always returned to the shy nightmares of "White Chalk." In them, she has found a new way to tell her old stories of yearning and repression, focusing not on rebellion or despair but on what happens when one struggles to thrive within the cage.
Harvey's spirit during this show, one of only two scheduled to celebrate "White Chalk" in the U.S. (the other was last week in New York), was hardly confined. She grinned and gently joked her way through the complicated program, alternately playing guitar, autoharp and an array of pedals, drum machines and synthesizers, moving around the equipment-filled stage like Miss Havisham in her mansion -- minus any desire for a groom.
Her piano playing was elemental -- not a shock, given that she'd only recently learned the instrument, and she kept her drum loops simple, pulling more thrills from her room-shaking multi-octave voice. Harvey can be awkward onstage, but she was notably relaxed as she turned band-based songs into solitary tours de force.
Her good mood diffused the tension of her songs, but playing solo also allowed Harvey to further extend the isolated mood of "White Chalk." This is Harvey's domestic album, one that will have every women's studies major thinking of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" and every film buff running out to rent Jane Campion's "The Piano." Its vintage patina, and its focus on women dealing with destinies they ache to escape, connects it to a long history of works on the subject of feminine containment, extending through the Brontës all the way back to fairy tales.
But "White Chalk" is also straight out of Harvey's book of obsessions. Monday, she played older favorites fueled by the outrage and rebellious drive of characters who refuse to keep still. The songs on "White Chalk" contain similar cries, but their protagonists don't break through their bonds. Through them, Harvey explores the subtleties of quiet and stasis, not sturm und drang.
The piping soprano Harvey uses on much of her new material is often buried in the mix on "White Chalk," but in concert, she turned it into a keen. Her magnificent growl, which drew cheers from the crowd whenever it surfaced on older songs, still packs its punch; but that "little" voice has its own stories to tell, and they, too, are harrowing.
The set list showed how the two Harveys connect. "Down by the Water," from 1995's "To Bring You My Love," is a murder ballad whose paranoia echoes the new album's title track. The abandoned swain in "My Beautiful Leah" counts off the months since he lost his love; in "The Mountain," a betrayed lass counts the trees in her orchard, dying one by one. Integrated into her whole body of work, the "White Chalk" songs don't feel minor. They have a fury of their own.
And that dress, the centerpiece of the new album's striking cover, where it appears pristine, not yet marked with the black ink of Harvey's scribbled words? It's a far cry from the slinky cat suits she's worn in the past, and even further from the tank tops and combat boots in which she began her career. But there's no better way to understand containment than trying to play rock 'n' roll in a long Victorian gown.
"I have to make so many adjustments to play this song," Harvey joked at one point, shifting her skirts to accommodate her guitar strumming. Harvey's always been fascinated with what's lost and gained by making adjustments. Now she's really brought those questions home.
BEN WENER @OC REGISTER
Twelve years ago PJ Harvey gave a stunning performance at the Mayan Theatre that I suspect is still seared into the memory of anyone who saw it.
Longtime fans of the revered, rather reclusive English singer-songwriter, who just turned 38, will recall that Polly Jean was then at her most intensely dramatic. Having cast off players in favor of studio experimentation, she had just issued "To Bring You My Love," a religiously metaphoric, psychosexually fueled work that ranks high on virtually any list of the best albums of the '90s.
Yet, as gripping as every minute of it remains, it was nonetheless the result of an identity crisis that found Harvey at her lowest point personally. Consequently, she hid behind a grotesquely beautiful cabaret mask ("Joan Crawford on acid," she once called her thrashed-diva look, though "proto-Amy Winehouse" fits now) while simultaneously creating one of the most riveting experiences in recent rock history. Few acts have been so positively transfixing – no one seemed to blink or breathe that night at the Mayan.
Mesmerizing as ever years later, Harvey now has come full circle, having returned to downtown Los Angeles for a rare solo showcase Monday at the opulent Orpheum Theatre to promote her new album, the ghostly "White Chalk." (It's one of only two North American dates, following a New York stop. Harvey next plays Paris in mid-November – and so far nowhere else.)
Not only did she open this show much as she did that Mayan gig in '95, the churning "To Bring You My Love" and the yearning "Send His Love to Me" setting a prevailing mood, but she also restored a trace of theatricality, albeit in a muted manner. Where years ago Harvey would play-act in the vein of Bowie becoming Ziggy Stardust – a move she quickly ditched, her chameleonic ways limited to music ever since – she here adopted a more Björkian approach to dressing up.
That is, her look was just that, a striking affectation. Hers was literally strewn with meaning, while Björk's are often only colorful: Though Harvey donned the same prim white dress she wears on the cover of "White Chalk," she later revealed its splashes of graffiti actually comprised the lyrics of her new songs. ("The Devil," for instance, ran down her right arm.)
Her quip that it would come in handy should she forget any words, however, was just one bit of proof that her costume wasn't a façade employed to separate her from fans. Indeed, she has never given such an intimate, interactive performance, nor seemed so radiantly happy, sincerely touched (even embarrassed) by the adoring outpouring here.
Harvey, one of those artists who, like Björk and Tori Amos, can easily be mythologized out of proportion, has taken care this decade to dispel cultish worship by rooting herself in live traditionalism – coming on Chrissie Hynde cool while opening for U2 in 2001, getting in-your-face raw at the Fonda in 2004 like she hadn't been since her start.
By definition she was once more unfettered at the Orpheum, emotionally naked whether fervently chugging through staples (breath-bating takes on "Rid of Me" and "Man-Size") or retooling others ("Down by the Water" was transformed for autoharp). Yet she was also undeniably traditional, surrounding herself with instruments as Neil Young and Beck do during such solo endeavors, then roaming from station to station to revisit phases of her sterling career.
As befits such an overview, Harvey's selections from the past slotted remarkably well alongside the shivery piano sketches of "White Chalk," in which this lithest of indie icons sings in the highest reaches of her range, sometimes soaring like an angel escaping hell, other times shrieking like a banshee in a bear trap.
It's an unnerving sound that makes this disc her most challenging by far, but it's hardly the about-face some consider it. Chillingly Gothic and defiant in its depression (note how she repeatedly wails the line "Nobody's listening / Oh, but I miss you" in "The Piano"), the album is rooted in the same heavy subjects that have always intrigued her – abandonment and loss, regret and betrayal, love and sex and death.
As such, it's tempting to make too much of juxtapositions of key songs, to view her performance as one long self-exorcism rife with riddles and painfully vivid details mistaken for autobiography. She definitely feels somethingdown deep – it's so evident in the feral dynamism of her vocals.
Just whatshe's feeling, however – even now, when her head space would seem to be at its least cluttered – well, detecting clues about that is partly what maintains our fascination. She's never been so inviting, so open-faced. And still I don't suppose we're any closer to knowing the real Polly Jean than we were 12 years ago.
STEVE APPLEFORD @LA CITY BEAT
Polly Jean Harvey is a woman of multiple moods, just like the rest of us. She was one of the great rock artists to emerge in the ’90s, an uncompromising voice with a fully realized vision of joyous rage and desire, an indie-rock heroine to match anything from Cobain and company. And she was just as anxious to change it up from the moment her debut album appeared in 1992. So she has, stretching beyond her initial raw electric riffs, adding new textures and sophistication, even going glam for a time, and then stripping it back again and again, always pushing toward some exciting unknown sound and future.
The woman who appeared onstage at the Orpheum Theater on Monday, October 15, was just one more version of the same restless PJ Harvey. We find her now in a roughly Victorian mood, with the volume turned down low at times, crafting chamber music for your quiet moments of guilt, loss, and despair. She stood in a long white gown, a dress very much like the one she wears on the cover of her new album, White Chalk, but this one had scattered lyrics embroidered like a scrawl across the skirt, the sleeves, chest, and back.
The 90-minute concert began as she was handed an electric guitar to pluck out the low notes of “To Bring You My Love,” a song from 1995, as she slashed hard at the chords, stepping delicately on the row of effects pedals in her high heels. She spent the entire night alone up there, holding the big stage solo as so few can, armed with just a pair of guitars, an upright piano, a drum machine, a keyboard, and a single cymbal.
She was soon at the piano for a trio of new songs, all from White Chalk, her 35-minute collection of quiet despair, using low-volume and achingly gentle vocals to rip open another world of love and terror and rage and ecstasy, trading her Howlin’ Wolf roots and underground noise spasms for melodies as fragile as a child’s toy piano. Harvey performed the songs at the highest, soft edge of her voice, sometimes fading to a whisper. On the murder ballad “The Piano,” she sounded genuinely spooked, singing: “My fingers sting where I feel your fingers have been/Ghostly fingers moving my limbs/Oh, God, I miss you.”
The sound of White Chalk has already had some critics (and there’s always a few) puzzled and dismissive, but to hear these fragile songs performed and in context with her overall work, it’s a fitting and gripping expansion – offering another shade, voice, and character. Onstage, the songs already seem essential, messages and moments that reveal and can’t be taken back.
For her eighth album, Harvey might be allowed a bold shift away from her bristling comfort zone. Much of her best work has been minimalist and loud. White Chalk is just as austere, and quietly brooding, rolling along its particular spooky momentum.
At the Orpheum, Harvey was an otherwise confident and loving host, pausing between songs to compliment the décor of the old theater, with its ornate walls and drapes of orange, red, and gold, the ancient chandeliers glowing high above her adoring crowd. She seemed at home here. “How old is it?” she asked. “Lovely, isn’t it?”
Replied one male fan: “You’re lovely, Polly.”
There was a lot of that on Monday. And then she would be back on her feet, lifting up an electric guitar, wailing and riffing through “Man-Size” from ’93, her voice rough and feminine, then a cappella as she slowly stepped back from the microphone. And Harvey was once more in search of another bit of unexpected subtlety amid the loudest noises and quietest screams at her disposal.
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