P.J. Harvey Audio Interview
Written by: John Bitzer
Source: Cdnow.com

Audio! P.J. Harvey has recorded our choice for best alternative album of 2000, and she explains its nuances in this rare audio interview.

Truthfully, Polly Jean Harvey's career was in the doldrums until recently. In the early '90s, she had set a torrid pace, emerging out of nowhere to release her landmark 1992 debut album, Dry, then an equally impressive follow-up, 1993's Rid of Me. She even enjoyed a bit of a commercial breakthrough with 1995's To Bring You My Love and its semi-hit "Down by the Water." By then, she had cemented her reputation as one of alternative rock's most challenging artists, as she mined the taut power of three-piece blues-rock fueled by songs of sexual frustration and anger.

But in the second half of the '90s, she grew restless and bored. Harvey dabbled in collaborations (with such friends as John Parish, Nick Cave, and Tricky) and even experimented with other art forms, including sculpture, poetry, and acting (she played Mary Magdalene in Hal Hartley's 1998 film The Book of Life). But she wasn't connecting with her audience. Indeed, 1998's bleak Is This Desire? was her most disappointing work to date.

Sensing the need for a change, she moved to New York City in 1999, living there for six months, soaking up its culture, pace, and energy. It worked. On her latest effort, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea -- our choice for Best Alternative Album of 2000 -- she sounds completely re-energized, and even happy. It's her most accessible album to date -- a combination of glistening pop melodies and her usual fiery guitar rock -- and clearly shows her reaching a new plateau, with a new command of her skills.

Harvey phoned CDNOW recently from a tour stop in Detroit to reflect on all of this.

CDNOW: Moving to New York for a while seemed to rejuvenate you. What prompted it?
Polly Jean Harvey: It was a mixture of things, really. I'm somebody that moves around quite a lot in my life. I move from home at least twice a year, and I'm kind of drawn to that traveling. I'm drawn to New York because of many things. Every time I've passed through there on tour it's always felt very inspiring and exciting -- a quite vital place to be. And on top of that I've had quite a few friends there.

Did Hal Hartley play a role in it?
Yeah, Hal was very supportive -- he was willing to help me find a space and everything. I ended up borrowing most of his studio and his four-track and his guitars and stuff while I was there.

It's funny, because no one ever saw you around town. You were very quiet about it.
I can do that. I think if people act like a star then they get noticed and stuff. But I'm just into doing my day-to-day business -- I'll go into cinemas and galleries, and shopping all on my own, and I've never had much of a problem.

Did you go to clubs?
I went to the Knitting Factory at least twice a week, and Tonic as well. I went over to Brooklyn a few times. There were some good electronic music clubs there where people were creating music in the moment using computers and drum machines, and stuff.

There are several lyrical references to New York on your new album as well. Do you think the city revitalized you?
Yeah, I think so. I think that was happening in my life anyway. But to be in New York at the same time as a shift is going on … it's a great place for something like that. I found the city made me feel strong somehow, even though you have to look out for your own [safety], but in a way, that's a good thing. It made me see that the things I wanted to happen in my life you have to make happen. You can't just sit around and wait for them to get to you. And I think that's quite a common experience for New York -- it's a city that makes you feel the power to be able to make those changes happen.

You also seem, well, happy on this record. You've accomplished that rare feat of capturing happiness in your songs intelligently.
I don't buy into the myth that you have to be miserable in order to create. I think a lot of great art has been made when people were of relatively sound mind and being. I don't think it's any great accomplishment that I can still write songs when I'm happy.

Nonetheless, it's a striking difference from your earlier work, which was darker and more frustrated. Rob Ellis, your drummer, said that your new songs seem more curvaceous, as opposed to your earlier work, which seemed more tightly confined in a box.
Yeah, I think that was a good description. Often I describe it as that I used to see things in black and white, and now it's like being able to see the full color range. I used to be very blinkered in my approach, very set on a very specific way of doing things -- this way was right, and everything else was wrong. As I've gotten older, it's been a gradual process of realizing that there's all these different shades in between that are just as valid and just as right. It's a much wholer kind of picture.

And that includes moving away from blues scales, primarily, into pop melodies?
Yeah, it was a very conscious decision. I always try to challenge myself after each album to make something different. "OK, I've done that. I want to try and do something else now. Can I do this?" So I did want to move away from the blues territory. And I listened to the collection of songs I'd written, in the way I always do, and said, "What are these songs crying out for?" They were crying out to be pop songs, basically.

Sonically, you've also moved away from that soft-loud approach -- tight and then explosive -- and now you're comfortable on a more even plane.
From early on, not just because of how I was as a person, but the nature of being in a three-piece band, you're very limited to the amount of change you can make with those three elements, so one of my strongest elements was the use of loud and quiet, which we used to exploit fully. And as the band has grown and the people that I work with have grown, I've lost the need to use that as one of my major components for making change and interest in the music.

At one point, you broke up the original trio and had a falling out with Rob. How did he come back into your world?
We had one of those classic band differences around 1993. Rob left the band, and I said, "Go ahead, leave." We didn't speak to each other for about five years. And now we've cleared all that out, and we're best of friends again. But, yeah, for a time, he and I could no longer bear to be in the same room with each other.

And do you think that somehow your sound is more complete with him back behind the drums?
I think I work in a special way with Rob. We work in a kind of intense energy space and bounce ideas off each other, and we're both very flighty when it comes to music and difficult to pin down. But that kind of intensity seems to bring out the best in both of us.

Onstage, you seem much more comfortable fronting the band as well -- often without the guitar.
I'm much more comfortable whether I'm playing the guitar or singing, really. There came a point where I accepted that this is my life, and that it's completely valid and a worthy thing to do. For a long time, I struggled with the whole nature of what I was doing. I was just wondering if it was at all worthwhile, and all the other things you have to deal with. I was feeling guilty for being able to do something like songwriting or something creative when so many of my friends and associates would love to be doing that, and it just hasn't happened for them.

And so a lot of guilt comes with it as well, and you have to work through all of that stuff. Certainly I did. I had to finally get to a point where I no longer feel guilty for having that possibility in my life, and seeing that it is very worthwhile what I'm doing, and that I can give people a lot of enjoyment and understanding, and compassion through my music. There was a notion in my head that to be able to make music and write music for a living was a selfish thing, and I no longer feel that.

Is that because you grew up in a rural community in England where most people worked hard for a living?
I don't know. Never in my eyes, because I know how hard the work is for me. But I think that very often in other peoples' eyes, even my dearest friends, they don't really think of it as work still. It's almost like, oh, I'm off on a holiday, and I'm having a good time. But I'm aware that it's difficult for people to see that it's just as much a hard-work job as a lot of what other people do.

And it must have helped that when you were young your parents encouraged your interest in music.
I listened to a lot of great records growing up, thankfully because of my parents. I came from an artistic background. My mom's a sculptress, and my dad quarries stone. They're both quite earthy people, both quite hippy-ish. And they were always surrounded by musicians and artists -- all of their friends are of one of those two categories. So I did grow up amongst that, and they encouraged that in my life.

You keep yourself busy with various art forms. How has acting or sculpture, or poetry informed your music?
Well, it all comes from the same creative source, really, so I feel like it's just learning more about that source -- different sides of it that you see with different mediums. My poetry writing -- and I always hesitate to even call it poetry, because I don't feel at all skilled at it; I'm completely useless in writing poetry -- has led me to be more specific in lyrics, and it's led me to structure lyrics in a much better way and create little pictures, little scenes, little films, or whatever.

In previous years, your onstage persona seemed informed by acting, as if you were trying on different characters.
Yeah, right around '95, or even a bit prior to that, I was beginning to feel my way into becoming something else onstage, and I thought that was something I had to try at the time. It was something I was interested in and never really experimented with before. And I'm glad I went through that stage and tried it, but having done it, it's not something I think I'd return to. I had to do it to get it out of my system.

Now that it's been several years, when you're playing some of your earliest songs, such as "Dry" or "Sheela-Na-Gig," do you come at them in a new way?
Definitely. I come at them with a very different kind of wisdom, I think. I'm playing songs like "Man-Size" and "Sheela" now in the set in the three-piece format, but it does feel different. It's in the same way I've brought some songs more up-to-date. I'm playing "Dry" and "Hair" in quite a different way with this new band, and it's nice. Some songs need that and will come up to date with you, and other songs like "Man-Size" and "Sheela" really feel the need to stay how they were to me.

On your new album, you used Thom Yorke from Radiohead on a couple of tracks, and he sings lead on "This Mess We're In." How did that happen?
I wanted to write a song for somebody else to sing and have it on my album. Thom was top of my list of voices that are incredible and move me very deeply. So I wrote the song with him in mind and sent it to him, and said would he be interested in singing it? Then he said yes.

You're opening for U2 on an upcoming tour. How does that feel, having been a headliner at mid-size venues, going to the next level and opening for an act like that?
It's actually great fun. I've done it in the past, and I enjoy just being a support band. It's very humbling, in a good way, and you learn an enormous amount -- especially for a band like U2. I really like U2, and I always have respected their music and what they do.

Is it important to you to work toward commercial success?
No it isn't, to be honest. What's important to me always is the songs and staying true to my own heart, if you like. I'm driving toward challenging myself and feeling some sense of fulfillment and a sense of giving pleasure to people to be able to play this music for their enjoyment. And that is success in my terms, rather than materialistic success or numbers or money.