Is This Desire?
Written by: Rebecca Berry
Source: Rip It Up Magazine, Dec/Jan 2002-3

Who better than PJ Harvey to say a big 'up yours' to the rock and roll boys club that is the Big Day Out? If You're male, she'll intimidate you, and you'll "feel a fire lit between your legs". PJ dons yet another fancy frock to wave the femme fatale flag.

Imagine breaking your leg, being rushed to hospital and gazing into the compassinate eyes of the female nurse as she injects you with morphine. Try to imagine the nurse is PJ Harvey. It might sound odd; after all Polly Jean is the famous result of two X chromosomes uncharacteristically fusing with some seriously dark rock and roll. Among her favourite lyrical themes are sex and death. Her ex is Murder Ballads crooner Nick Cave. She has crow-black hair, blood red lips and slightly intimidating eyes. She describes the material she's savoured for her next album as "dirty, low, heavy, grungy, unpleasant, vomit-inducing kind of stuff". Her music has earned her the title "angst-ridden old bitch cow" and unsubstantiated rumours that she tapped into this angst through a battle with anorexia during her teens. While you couldn't get much further from the rock and roll than nursing, caring for others is what comes instinctively to this 31-year old, who nearly gave it all away to do just that. "I went through my usual enormus doubt period where I thought that everything I'd ever written was a load of rubbish and I had to give the whole thing up and take on a differnt career," she says on the phone from her home in Dorset, where she's spent the past nine months writing new material (including some songs with Marianne Faithfull) and flitting to and from her other pad in LA. "And yes, at the time, it was to be a nurse."

So in 1996 she packed it in mid-way through recording her fifth album, Is This Desire? suffering not only from writers' block but a severe bout of depression. She'd just ended a difficult romantic relationship with her once-musical-cohort, Cave later telling Q: "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."

A year later, having also abandoned the nursing idea, Harvey returned to the project much to the relief of her record company. Like each of her albums, her emotions are written all over it. In the title track she whimpers the chorus as though fighting back the tears; the last person she thanks in the liner notes in 'Nick'.

Perhaps it's because she deals with her woes through her music, but on reflection, Harvey has a knack of turning her past personal issues into hypothetical ones. "When you go through hard times - which everyone does - you learn so much about yourself and about your relationship to the world that you just get a different perspective. I wouldn't change a thing because it's made me what i am today, it's taken my to another place i couldn't have reached without going through stuff like that".

You have no regrets?
"No, definitely not. There are lyrics now I hear that I think, 'Well gosh, I was really young when I wrote that'. There are lyrics I wouldn't sing anymore just because I sound like an 18 year old. I couldn't have learnt what I needed to learn without doing them."

Is this Desire? though somewhat mournful and musically schizophrenic, was the brilliant predecessor to her most celebrated album. In 2000, she was awarded the coveted Mercury Music Prize for the lush and hypnotic Stories..., inspired by a six month stint in NYC and briefly featuring musical-renaissance-man himself, Radiohead's Thom Yorke. Yet in typical Harvey fashion, she says it isn't her best work. "If you were to ask me what songs I thought were good on that record I'd say two. At this stage in my life I think, what's the point in releasing something unless you really think that everything is great?"

This is the PJ Harvey you don't see on stage. Her speaking voice is soft and feminine, at times apologetic and broken occasionally by gales of laugher. In fact it's hard to imagine she's the same women whose larynx rasps and convolutes its way through Rid of Me, or To Bring You My Love, voice soaring from her wiry, baby doll-dressed frame. She finds it funny people expect her to be PJ Harvey, rock star, day in, day out. "I never feel like I become something other than what I am every day, I think that every person has multi facets to their character," she says. " When I'm in a performing environment, different parts of myself are able to come forward. It'd be pretty daft if I behaved like I'm on stage when I'm going to the bank. It's all as much a part of me as those practical parts. It's inside me all the time, every day, but that's its place where it can come out and play."

Which it will in January at the Big Day Out when Harvey brings her guitar, bass player and drummer to perform at her second BDO gig. "You're in for a treat," she enthuses, then stops herself from describing the outfit she'll wear, something a seamstress friend who lives up the road is in the process of creating.

Is image important to you?
"It is. I enjoy clothes and image and I enjoy the whole package of music and the look. It's exciting to me."

Do men find you intimidating?
"Yes... yes they do, actually."

How would you define sexy?
"Not in words really, I think it's more of a feeling. If you feel a fire lit between your legs, I'd define that as sexy. I find a lot of music is very sexy, as well as people. I judge it by how it makes you feel physically. If you feel hot then it's sexy. And again, that's different for all people. Some people feel that listening to Kylie Minogue. I can't say I do."

While the pop world is bursting at the bustline with female artists, you could count rock and roll's truly great femmes on one hand. Yet rather than congratulate herself for being a lone star, Harvey is happier to be appreciated for what she is: a no-compromise artist. "All I've ever wanted from what I try to do is respect for sticking to my gut feelings and I think that's something I've always done. It's acutally quite hard to do escepially when other people are trying to sway you. For instance, the record companies wanting to push you in a certain direction, hoping for hits, and I've always had quite a struggle on my hands to say, 'No I'm sorry, this is the way it's going to be'. It makes me feel really happy to know that other people can recognise that because it's tough."

Harvey describes the modern music climate as "appalling - it just all sounds the bleeding same" but one artist she believes is worthy of praise is muso/thespian Vincent Gallo, to whom she's also been romantically linked. She won't discuss him as anything more than a friend but her admiration is palpable. "He does interesting things that are totally his own and don't sound like anybody else."

"It's quite tough to keep pushing yourself to the limit to keep trying differnt things and not sticking to the same formula. You're going to fall on your face if you do that and other times you won't. I tend to react against the album I've just done for the sake of wanting to plunge myself into something really different. And I feel the same thing towards other artists I admire who are constantly trying out new things. Sometimes I don't particularly like what they're doing but i have that respect for them because they're trying something different."

While Stories... is Harvey's most renowned piece of work, every one of her six albums has gained critical acclaim, from her aggressive, punk-tinged debut Dry 10 years ago, to the commercially successful To Bring You My Love of 1995. The worst thing to have been written of Harvey's music appears to be the "angst-ridden old bitch cow" tag, which having spoken to Harvey for just a few minutes, seems inaccurate. Especially when you consider her interests include Russian folk music, sculpting and poetry, and that the other great love of her life is animals. Perhaps 'Educated, polite, English lass' is more appropriate.

Do you feel a certain pressure to live up to your own work?
"Yes, it's my ambition to have a 10 song album where every song makes your jaw drop open and your heart stop. I would measure myself by the work I'd done before and I've always wanted to try and be better. It's just the way I am."