The Muse Interview: PJ Harvey
Written by: Leagues O'Toole
Source: Muse

Meet "Happy" PJ Harvey. You may not believe it but her new album, "Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea", is the iconic PJ's cheeriest fare in years.

One doesn't quite know what to expect from Polly Jean Harvey. She's spent the past ten years making distorted and tortured blues songs sound sexy, robust, rootsy, fragile and powerful, all at the same time. Her interviews have been rare and, predominantly, guarded. Her image has been continually theatrical and loaded, from flamboyant to frail, dour to daring, often subverting traditional female appearances. But on the evidence of her latest album, "Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea", what one should really expect today is happy Polly, in-love Polly, calmer-than-ever-before Polly.

It's not that "Stories..." is a mild-mannered or watered-down version of what went before. It's a record that cruises from place to person with a keen observational eye, perhaps jettisoning much of the darker inner perspectives of previous albums, particularly 1998's "Is This Desire?" It's also a record that oozes instinctive melody, probably the most free-flowing since her début, "Dry". But this is way more sophisticated. Produced by herself and old chums Rob Ellis and Bad Seed Mick Harvey and mixed by Head, together they've created a lush and earthy canvas for Polly's metaphorical dichotomies.

Anyway, here she is striding into a Dublin hotel banquet room so large it amplifies the sense of occasion. She is elegant, smartly dressed, warm, professional and confident. There isn't the slightest sense of awkwardness that might have apprehended our expectations, even despite the fact that she's just encountered one of the roughest ferry trips of her life. But then, Polly knows all about stormy seas. So let's start with the title -­ the polar themes and references to the city and the sea, Manhattan and rural England.

"There is that, but I didn't use the title on such a real level. I used it for other reasons as well. The land and sea are often representations of consciousness and subconsciousness. You could look at it that way. The feeling of concrete or the feeling of sand that slips through your fingers and is gone. Time passing. All these different things. It's just highlighting a contrast of extremes that's in our lives daily. I've become a lot more interested and a lot more aware of life outside of what just goes on inside of me. And really observing the world at large and people. A good place to do that is in cities. So that's naturally going to reflect in the writing. Manhattan is a city with a unique energy to it. And I think a lot of that energy has come across in the recording."

If anything, "Stories..." radiates with happiness more than anything else, a theory further augmented by Polly's current relaxed demeanour. "It was a very happy time actually. We were recording in this studio in a village called Great Linford, just outside Milton Keynes. We were there for about six weeks, just living there and working there. It was a very happy time with a good combination of characters, y'know, myself, Mick Harvey, Rob Ellis and Head. We were the only people there for that whole period, apart from Thom Yorke who was there for a few days. It was just very enjoyable and in terms of making records it was the most fun I've had."

The aforementioned Yorke contributes to a number of songs, most notably the suspended, ethereal blues of "This Mess We're In", a duet with Polly. "I first met Thom in '92/'93, I think. We hadn't really remained in close touch but we'd occasionally write each other letters. But, y'know, I love his voice and wanted very much to write a song for somebody else to sing but to have on my own record. I was just interested in having somebody else's voice other than my own, to have that different dynamic. He's the first person that I would've chosen. I wrote the song with his voice in mind. And just chanced it. I asked him first in principle­: 'If I were to give you a song, would you at all possibly be interested in singing?' He immediately said yes he would."

The song itself is probably closer to classic Radiohead than anything included on "Kid A". But is Polly a fan of the abstractly overhauled Oxforders? "I do like it ["Kid A"]. It hasn't stayed with me as long as "OK Computer" or some of the other records. It's different, isn't it? Sometimes you buy a record and it's still really vital to you after a year and other times, after three months, it's gone. It hasn't stayed with me. But I still love it."

Thom Yorke, Nick Cave, Steve Albini and John Parish are amongst the almost iconic roll-call of male artists Polly has worked with throughout her career. There is, of course, one other male influence in Polly's life. Her long-term manager and U2 kingpin Paul McGuinness. "He's a rose. A fantastic guy. We've worked together for six years now. He fights vehemently to keep the artist's rights, always. And is ultimately, at the end of the day, a huge fan of music. Any act that he works for, he has a genuine love for what those people are doing. That surpasses everything. He's got a good heart, in the right place, which is unusual."

And does she share his love for the work of Bono plus 3? "I was an enormous U2 fan and still am actually. Throughout my teenage years, completely, always top of my list. I have every album they've ever done and know every song off by heart. The new album is growing on me. I initially loved "Beautiful Day", the single, immediately. I heard the rest of the album and the more I've heard it, the more I do like it."

But, inevitably, it's strong female role models who are most often cited in reference to her music, most notably Patti Smith, a comparison Polly dismisses as "lazy journalism" before giving her own list. "Marianne Faithfull. I've never met her but I would love to write a song for her. I don't know if she'd want to sing on my record but I'd love to give her a song. I'd like to write a song for Madonna actually, that'd be interesting. I only say that because I know she's said in interviews that she likes what I do. Which makes me think 'Oh, maybe she would be interested.' I don't know. She writes good songs herself. Or Johnny Cash. I'm friends with Will Oldham actually. He rang me up the other day and he was just ecstatic, [adopts rushed, excited voice] 'I just sung in the studio with Johnny Cash! He sang one of my songs.' Yeah, so that would be another."

What about a collaboration with the Bonnie Prince of Louisville himself? "We'll probably work together at some point in the future. We've been tossing around the idea of doing some sort of country duet album. He's so strange, Will. The day before he goes somewhere, he'll say 'I'm playing in...' and I'm 'Why didn't you tell me two weeks ago or I might've got there?' He's a gypsy really. We've been talking about the album for years now. I bet it'll happen one day."