The Raw And The Cooked
Written by: Jeffrey Rotter
Photographed by: Valerie Phillips
Source: Nylon, June/July 2004

You may think you know Polly Jean Harvey. But on her latest album, rock 'n' roll's 50-foot queenie shows off a softer side (as well as her fabulous growl).

Seagulls, wood pigeons, wind blowing over the open end of a metal fencepost - three of Polly Jean Harvey's favorite sounds. Pretty surprising if you're familiar with her six albums. For about a decade, the British songwriter has worked up puerile, growling, baritone hymns about sexual longing and self-flagellation. But it turns out Harvey has a soft side, too. Her latest effort, PJ Harvey [wrong! The author is referring to Uh Huh Her], is rife with mellow - almost bucolic - moments. She's a big fan of Aarvo Part, the Estonian sacred-music composer, and his monkish spirit infuses this record with a gentle throb that isn't in her early work. Harvey's in a different place now. "There's a different kind of energy that comes forward," she explains. "There's a lot of joy, a lot of hope, a lot of celebration of love. I tried to incorporate some beauty into all the songs." But that doesn't mean she's gone pretty. There's plenty of fuzzed-out bass, 4-track tape hiss, and prickling pizzicato strings to remind you this is still the woman who gave us Rid of Me, possibly the most raw-boned alt-rock album of the '90s.

Harvey has a favorite sound on the new record. "In the middle of 'It's You,'" she says, "when it suddenly goes to the different chords and the autoharps and piano come in. THe song shifts from those leaden-hearted baritone sounds. It cracks my heart open every time I hear it." That shift is the key to Harvey's bipolar sound. "I love high contrast," she says. "Where it can throw you into a new state of being."

Her soul-baring tunes have often misled critics into calling Harvey a confessional songwriter. But the singer denies the charge. "People have always thought that," she says. "But I don't write my diary and then sing that. I use my imagination, and I project feelings and emotions on situations that interest me - it's not autobiography." It's no surprise that the singer draws inspiration from writers like Raymond Carver. As in Carver's short stories, the emotional strength in Harvey's lyrics comes from what's implied. "What I love about his work is what he leaves out - he's a simple writer who leaves interpretation open. I love the simplicity of underwriting, so you can insert your own story."

Like a painter whose sketches are more compelling than her finished oils, Harvey makes thumbnails that pack a serious emotional punch. She released 4-Track Demos, the home recordings of the songs on Rid of Me, in 1993, and you need both to get the whole story. Likewise, the process that made PJ Harvey allowed for a startling mix of spontaneity and polish. She recorded the album alone at home as a set of demos, expecting to enter the studio with a full band to turn out the finished product. But it didn't work out that way. "I always go about it in the same process: Make a rough recording of it to work out what and how. I went about that usual process - but then I just felt that they seemed complete. They were emotionally working," she says. "It seemed a bit silly to rerecord and tell other players how to re-create these songs. I think you always sing it the best when you're right inside a song, working on it."

The two elements, the raw and the cooked, come together on an eerie, non-musical track near the end of the record, just before the set closer called "The Darker Days of Me & Him": one minute of keening seagulls and tape hiss.