Dark Star
Written by: David Cavanaugh
Source: Q Magazine, Dec. 2001

Equestrian manque, "angst-ridden old bitch cow" and - alright! - female artist of the year, Polly Harvey's bored of her sunny "commercial" image and heading in a direction marked "Weird". But why did she nearly become a nurse? And is she really going out with nutjob thesp Vincent Gallo? David Cavanaugh investigates.

There is a moment on her most recent album, Stories From The City, Stories From THe Sea, when Polly Harvey does something fantastically exciting. It comes in the sixth song, 'The Whores Hustle And The Hustlers Whore', an urgent rocker set in the sort of open-all-nite, fast-action metropolis you might find in an early '70s Rolling Stones tune. As Harvey sings the song's title for the final time, her voice begins to rasp. THe next line goes: "This city's ripped right to the core." And now it happens. The word "core’’ suddenly takes off vertically into the air, turning into a series of high-flying whoops that she sustains for nearly 20 seconds.

At such moments Harvey is the most thrilling recording artist alive. "God, those whoops - let’s just give her the award right now," you can hear the Mercury Music Music panel gasp. But there are also her whispers, her hisses, her moans. Harvey uses these bizarre animal noises to create additional syllables. "Mansize... zuzz-zuzz... got my leather boots on." "The last words she said... mnn-nnggyah... If I don’t find it this time... mnn-nnggyah... then I’m better off dead." On her 1998 album Is This Desire?, she contorted and distorted her voice into all manner of susurrations and detonations, sounding like an insomniac at breaking point who was systematically dialling the emergency numbers disguised as a different woman each time.

Stories From The City... was a typical Harvey about-turn. She had strong ideas about the record from the start (unlike the confusion that surrounded Is This Desire?, as we’ll see), and it was her first album in some years to put the spotlight on guitars rather than on electronics and twisted atmospheres. Among its notable features were evocative scenes of a bustling New York and some poignaint writing about love, hope and comfort. A few songs showed an unprecedented delicacy.

"I wanted everything to sound as beautiful as possible," she recalls. "Having experimented with some dreadful sounds on Is This Desire? and To Bring You My Love [1995] - where I was really looking for dark, unsettling, nauseous-making sounds - Stories From The City... was the reaction. I thought, No, I want absolute beauty. I want this album to sing and fly and be full of reverb and lush layers of melody. I want it to be my beautiful, sumptuous, lovely piece of work."

Stories From The City... came out on 23 October 2000. It's had a longer shelf-life than any previous PJ Harvey album, continuing to sell copies and receive award nominations over a year after its release. It’s now sold over 900,000: a couple more gongs will probably push it over a million.

Harvey has spent most of that time on the road. She and her band have headlined in North America, Europe and Australia, as well as making UK appearances in February, August, September and October. In the spring and early summer they toured America again for three months as a support act to U2 - an experience which Harvey, who tends to regard hostile audiences as a damn good challenge, remembers as some of the most fun she had all year.

On 11 September, the day Stories From The City... won the Mercury Music Prize, the band were in Washington DC. The terrorist attacks didn’t stop the tour but they stunned Harvey. Walking onstage at Chicago’s Riviera Theater two nights later, she was faced with a visibly distressed audience who seemed desperate for some kind of musical release. A nervous Harvey made a speech in which she "begged for their help, and we’d try to help them". The band went on to play one of the most intense concerts of their lives.

"[During] the gigs that followed," Harvey adds, "the response off the audience was verging on hysterical - in the sense of people just not being in control. And that made me think, This is crucial... people need this... they need somewhere to let out their feelings and their sadness and their anger. And the last gig that we did in LA - LA of all places, which is known for being quite cool - the crowd were making so much noise between songs that we couldn't hear each other to start playing."

Harvey came off tour on 2 October after a two-night finale at London's Brixton Academy. In the weeks since, she has put Stories From The City... to the back of her mind, having come to the conclusion that it's not her best album. Some of the virtues that others find in it - consistency of sound, harmonious guitars, in-car listenability - are the very qualities she now wants to turn away from. Harvey has little interest in fame or status or making music for the masses. The indications on the surface suggest that this much-respected performer is now ready to come in from the cold, leave her nightmares at reception and become a major commercial force. To make such an assumption, however, would be to miss the point of Polly Harvey entirely.

The woman who enters the Prince Albert pub in Notting Hill shortly after 3.30pm looks serious and modern. Dressed in black, impeccable salon haircut, bag over her shoulder. No doubt she works in one of the creative industries: a TV production company or an upmarket agency. A thousand girls in London walk into pubs the same way. Push the door, slightly out of breath, a quick look around, recognition with a raise of the head.

Polly Harvey is young for a 32-year-old. (Bag on table, orders a cup of tea.) Not that she seems immature, but you don't get the impression of someone who's chock-full of confidence. Considering she has been in the music business for a decade, it's odd that she rarely talks in an ironic or sarcastic fashion. "I guess her best quality is that she knows what she wants and she calls a spade a spade," her former boyfriend Nick Cave told Q earlier this year. But that makes her sound like Princess Michael of Kent. Harvey reckons its simply because she lacks the nerve to tell lies.

Her speaking voice - which is not the same as the one she uses in the spoken section of 'This Mess We're In' - is soft and high like Kate Bush, but more hesitant. Harvey comes from Dorset, so there are lots of long Rs. Her Dorset provenance is still audible in her long "r"s, and though she still lives there, her house is more ofa "landing pad" than a home. She wants to get back on the road soon, ideally to play bass guitar or drums anonymously in somebody else's band. She is, meanwhile, writing concurrently for her next album and for a proposed project with Marianne Faithfull. Promoting the gospel of Polly Harvey seems genuinely the least of her concerns.

The real-life Harvey is a puzzle. How does this unassuming, modest person (whose road-crew are politely asked not to swear or belch in her presence) mutate into what we see onstage and hear on record? What enables her to look so fearless and sound so commanding? Is she acting? If not, how does she not die of embarrassment?

"As a child," she recalls, "I would always want to read out something that I'd written, or use marionette string puppets to act out plays. I'm talking from four or five years upwards... Performing is something that I've always loved and felt confident doing. I feel my confidence growing as I'm doing it. I'm not confident in a lot of other areas of my life, so I was naturally drawn towards this area where I felt very secure. I've always felt like I had something worth saying, or something worth performing in some way."

Music and songwriting were to give Harvey's imagination the optimum outlet, but there were other career options open to her. Had she chosen either of them, Harvey might now be a vet or a showjumper. These remained serious possibilities until the end of the '80s.

"I've always loved animals and still do. From the age of four to about 20 I rode horses. I competed in one-day eventing: that's showjumping, dressage and cross-country. Mild competition when I was four, of course. But then you progress and go into gymkhanas and then eventing later on. I could have gone into purely working with horses and competing. I'm a very competitive person. If I'm going to do something, I want to be the best at it."

Harvey has a way of bringing out endearing little details about herself. For example, rock reference books state that she took a foundation art course before moving to London and forming the first PJ Harvey line-up in 1991. Purposeful-sounding stuff. But what they don't say is this:

"When I went to art college, I had to sell my horse because I didn't have the time to look after him anymore. That was a decision I had to make. I then had to decide whether I was going to go to art college and do a degree or whether I was going to do music. I was dabbling in all of these things and trying to find the way that I really wanted to go."

Even when Harvey rose to prominence with the albums Dry and Rid Of Me - and became "tarred with an angst-ridden old bitch cow image," as she later lamented - she felt pangs of guilt that she hadn't taken up veterinary work or another healing-orientated profession. Which was probably still bothering her when she made an extraordinary phone call in '97. Three months into the recording of the disturbing, excellent Is This Desire? LP, Harvey rang her engineer, Flood, and told him she was giving up music to become a nurse. In Africa.

A nurse? In Africa?
Mmm. It was just how I was feeling at the time. I was so confused that I didn't want to deal with anything anymore I wanted to abandon everything.

Why? What were the problems?
Well... without going into private things... I think most people go through a particularly difficult stage in their life. It was late 20s for me. A time of just questioning everything, and a time of coming out of a very difficult relationship [with Cave] which broke down. And that led to an enormous amount of questioning my whole idea of myself and my behaviour towards other people. And also my behaviour towards myself. I wasn't self-caring in ways that we should be... I didn't like myself at that time. I couldn't even say that, let alone say I loved myself. And so struggling with all of those things brought me to rock bottom, which was why the album was abandoned after three months.

Did this spread alarm among your management and record label?
Yes, it did. Because I was totally serious about giving it all up. I thought that I was absolute rubbish: how did I ever think I could call myself a songwriter?

What happened then?
Well, I did give it up. I left the project. I came back to it a year later, totally re-recorded a lot of the songs, replaced vocals on other songs, remixed everything, and basically sort of started again."

Do you think Is This Desire? is a dark album?
Yeah, I do, I don't know if you do. It would be interesting, actually, to speak to somebody that's only become interested in me with Stories From The City... to see what they would make of a record like Is This Desire? I put it on the other day and I thought what a strange, strange record it was. Really difficult to listen to. But then that's probably why I like it. I can't ever seem to get my head around it. It always surprises me."

There are times on Is This Desire? when you think the person singing would be unable to switch on a kettle, never mind find a way back from the brink. Harvey is too privacy-conscious to talk about nervous breakdowns or therapy, but she speaks the language of someone who's had help for depression. And people who are susceptible to depression seldom make as miraculous a recovery as recent articles suggested Harvey did.

I think journalists just listened to [Stories From The City...] and said, Oh, so you're happy and well-balanced now? As if everything had changed. People like things very black and white. And of course it's not like that."

It's become your new image. You only have good days now. There are no more stormclouds or circling ravens.

"Oh exactly, every day I'm tripping lightly in cornfields, singing to myself. It's just the way people like to categorise you and make things simple. It's not that simple. Every day is one day at a time, really."

How do you feel compared to six years ago?

"I wouldn't say I was happier or sadder. I think I know myself better basically. You get older and you just learn more about yourself. And in that knowledge there's less to fear, or there's more to understand. You can be more compassionate with yourself about your... er... your weaknesses or whatever. And that provides a more solid ground from which to work from."

Harvey has a friend in California whom she calls when she needs a particular kind of reassurance. His name is Don Van Vliet, but he used to be known as Captain Beefheart. It's funny to think of Polly phoning Beefheart to hear some common sense, but that's what happens. She tells him she's useless and that everything she does is a load of crap. He replies that she is an important, talented artist and not to beat herself up. "And I believe him. Even if I can't believe it myself."

Boyfriends, boyfriends. Girlfriends, girlfriends. Ask some celebrities who they're going out with at the moment, and they'll coyly divulge a name but refuse to say anymore. Polly Harvey prefers the Katharine Hepburn method. The singer sweetly praises the American filmmaker/ musician Vincent Gallo to the skies, but won't comment on rumours that they are in a relationship. Hepburn used to do the same whenever she was asked about Spencer Tracy. Certain Hollywood commentators called it having class.

"Have you met [Vincent]? He's a genius. He's an absolute perfectionist in everything he does. That's admirable - I can't do that, because I can't sacrifice that much of my life to perfecting my art. But I do think it's admirable in other people, although there does seem to be an enormous amount of heartache that goes with it. He's like that with whatever he's doing, whether it's photography or fllmmaking or writing - he does a lot of journalistic writing - or music. It's got to be 100 per cent or it's not good enough."

Are the two of you a couple?

"Again, sorry, this is my private life and it's not really what I like discussing."

One look at Harvey's official website (www.pjharvey.net) reveals how committed she is to privacy. That's about all it does reveal. Almost comically prosaic for a pop star's self-promo vehicle, it even stops short of championing her music - except to note that her albums have "garnered plaudits on both sides of the Atlantic". Harvey logged on recently and didn't like the look of some of the FAQs. They've now been taken off.

Is Harvey really so happy to let people read between the lines?

"Yes, yes I am."

Even if it means being misinterpreted?

"Yes."

You'd rather people got things wrong than knew too much?

"It's important for me to maintain a life outside my work. If people want more answers, all they have to do is look at the music. There's more about my character in the music than anywhere else."

Polly Harvey doesn't seem to be paying her personality much of a compliment. But what if she's hit the nail on the head? In person, it's true that she comes across as a less actualised version of her work. Not as sure of herself. Not as scintillating. Not as clever. If you were being callous, you could even describe her as a disappointment.

Spin that round the other way, though, and what you've got is a creator who is transcendence in a word. A creator who's even more impressive than anyone realises.

You said earlier that you like Is This Desire? because it surprises you. Is that the key motivation: to do things that make you think, I never knew I had that in me?
Definitely. That's absolutely it. I think most people don't get that... I'm glad that you've seen that's what it is. Because it is the most important thing for me as an artist, no matter what I'm doing. I can remember at art school I was the same - always wanting to come up with work that felt like a challenge to me, and a challenge to others who might be looking at it. Something that's going to raise questions. Something that's going to be out of the ordinary.

Something out of character for you to be doing in the first place?
Exactly. If I ever feel comfortable with the territory that I'm working in, I'll shy away from it. Because that means I'm not moving. I'm not moving away from where I've already been. That's always what I'm looking for - lyrically, musically. It's what I call my baseline, my bottom line. It has to challenge. It has to be different to anything I've done before. It has to surprise me.

Are you sometimes embarrassed by what you come up with? Does the "normal" side of you feel uncomfortable with the dark parts of your work?
I can read that a couple of ways. If you mean something that I've done creatively that I wouldn't have done in my everyday life - for instance, posing in a certain way for a photograph that I wouldn't show my grandmother - then, yes, there are times that I might be embarrassed by something I've done. But in terms of songwriting... well, I suppose there are times when I might listen back to a song and cringe. I'll think, Oh my God, that was just appalling, how could I ever have written that lyric? Yes, that does happen."

The lyrics on your first two albums had an out-of-controlness about them, as though you were hurling words at a blank piece of paper. How do you feel about them now?
A mixture of feelings. I feel very affectionate towards a lot of the songs, probably because I was much younger then. But again, there are lyrics that I can't accept even though they were written when I was only 20. I think I was quite a naïve 20-year-old, so when I first moved into music it was like getting everything off my chest in one fell swoop. It all came pouring out. And because I also was very mixed up and feeling misunderstood - like we all are at that age - that went into the music in a very extreme way. What I wanted to do was to shock: I wanted to do something shocking. That's what led to the words being as extreme as they are.

What will your next album be like?
A lot of the songs I've already written delve into dark areas again. Stories From The City... satisfies a piece of me, but it doesn't satisfy me in a whole way. I'm still looking for something that kind of covers all areas and I am very, very drawn to music that is unsettling, uncomfortable, dark, dealing with taboo subject matter. That's really where my heart of hearts lies.

By necessity and by choice, Polly Harvey doesn't make art that comes fluently to her. She makes art that involves labour and digging deep within - which is why she makes it, why there's so much of her in it, and why Captain Beetheart's phone rings every time she can't take any more of it. Like Beefheart, there's a chance that music won't be Harvey's outlet forever. She has already started to act in films (she starred in Hal Hartley's The Book Of Life in 1998, and more work is pencilled in for the spring), and also sculpts and writes poetry.

Harvey is an extremist: that stuff about Gallo being a 100 percenter could easily have been said about her. She currently puts 100 per cent into music and gets a fair percentage in return. "It's important that I'm always pushing boundaries and being able to satisfy that creative need of expression. At the moment, music still fulfils that for me, but there might come a time when I can say things better through a different medium. Whether that's going to be sculpture, acting, writing poetry or filmrnaking, I don't know. But I'm sure there'll be a time when I'll give 100 per cent in some other area."

And most likely garner plaudits on both sides of the Atlantic.