Edge of Darkness
Written by: Sharon O'Connell
Source: Time Out, May 2004

Always an enigma and drawn to the dark side, PJ Harvey has revisited her earthy roots for album number seven. She wanted the record to be honest and intimate, but maybe we should quit trying to sift private facts from lyrical fiction.

Intellectually, of course, you know it’s absurd. There’s necessarily a gulf between the public perception of an artist and the flesh-and-blood, quotidian actuality – without it, we would be robbed of the fantasy we crave, the artist of their sense of self – but occasionally, what you see is (naively, irrational) what you expect to get. Polly Jean Harvey is a case in point.

Through 13 years and six albums, Harvey’s public image has grown up around her like a thicket, a projected tangle of emotional instability, damaged femininity, sexual directness and an earthy, almost feral intensity. Early songs such as ‘Sheels-Na-Gig’ (the celebration of and explicit medieval carving) and ‘Dry’ (about the female lubricity that cannot lie), coupled with her thrilling physical live shows, gave the illusion of revelation, while making Harvey appear unknowable and forbidding. That she has always closely guarded her private life and is hardly a red-carpet regular has done little to dispel the idea of her as a cross between Lydia Lunch and Joan of Arc.

To find PJ Harvey, then – dressed in black pants and striped, one-shouldered T-shirt, her chin-length hair fashionably choppy – is both a surprise and relief. Britain’s most distinctive singer and songwriter may be extraordinary, but she’s also entirely... normal.

Harvey is about to release her seventh album, ‘Uh Huh Her’. It’s a spare and steadfast affair, mixing her earlier, visceral work – all urgent vocals and abrasive guitar – with something of 1995’s ‘To Bring You My Love’. Here, ‘Cat On The Wall’ and a satisfying ‘Who The Fuck?’ suggest Sonic Youth’s dissonant punk, in contrast to ‘The Letter’, with its jazzy, Hendrix-toned blues and the sombre, Cash-like ‘The Desperate Kingdom Of Love’. After the glossy and exultant, Mercury Music Award-winning ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’, it seems Harvey has drifted back to the expression she finds most natural.

‘I’d say I drifted forward,’ Harvey gently corrects, pouring the first of countless cups of milky tea. ‘I certainly didn’t consciously think: I want to go back to the first record I made. I went forward, wanting to simplify things. Coming off the back of “Stories…”, but that’s not challenging. I need to feel like I’m pushing myself. My first reaction is always to try and find new ground but, even stronger than that, it’s to get to the other extreme of the thing I did immediately before. So, I wanted t get back to the earthy, rootsy, more dirty side of things. I wanted this record to be simple, I wanted it to be ugly in some places, I wanted it to have a swagger to it – I remember writing the word “swagger” down – but also a real honesty and intimacy. I wanted a warmness and closeness and I wanted to make a welcoming record.

‘That was the proviso at the beginning,’ she adds, ‘but the record drifted into other territories. They always do.’

Does the darker, earthier expression come more naturally? ‘I think it is a natural place for me to go and, in the past, I’ve consciously made myself go in another direction. Even on the “Stories...” album, I was trying not to write anything too bluesy. “Do not get near the blues!”’ Harvey laughs in mock reprimand. ‘It’s very natural and comfortable for me to want to go down low, to the darker and more rootsy side of things, and it’s comfortable for me to write slow things; I really have to push myself to write up-tempo songs.’

Harvey, of course, has just reinforced the image people have of her – drawn in the dark side and beholden all things blue. ‘I know, I know,’ she smiles. ‘But there’s another assumption that goes with that, which is that I’m some dark, melancholic loner, who...’ she trails off. Lives in a cave and has mud on her hair? ‘Exactly. Which is obviously not the case and clearly doesn’t have to be the case to explore those things.’

Many writers are dogged by the assumption that every song they sing is necessarily autobiographical, but Harvey in particular seems to bring out the forensic scientist in her fans, desperate to uncover something – anything – that might count as personal evidence, and refusing to credit her with any creative imagination. Why are they so curious about her in a way that aren’t about say, Chris Martin? ‘I assume it’s because of the ideas I like to keep examining through music and also because I’m quite a private person. I don’t do much that’s in the public eye apart from what I do on stage, so maybe people want to know more. I guess in interviews I never divulge much private information, or take songs apart by describing lyrics for people – which I will never do,’ she declares, with the faintest hint of warning.

Little point, then, in asking what inspired the vicious ‘Who The Fuck?’ or for an explanation of the betrayal central to ‘The Life And Death Of Mr Badmouth’. It is as simple a thing as your use of the first person that makes it so hard for people to believe you’re not being literal?

Another cup of tea is poured. ‘I think it’s that and the fact that I’m a performer. I go on stage as myself and perform those songs, so people are able to marry the imager of me very closely with the work. I’m not saying everything is purely fiction – of course, it’s not; it’s all tempered with the way I see life and the experiences I’ve had, but I embellish those and project outcomes on them and I imagine trying to create a feeling that’s deeply moved me.’

Surely refusing to discuss your lyrics leaves them open to the risk of misinterpretation and to people reading you wrongly? Harvey shakes her head. ‘I don’t think it’s possible to misinterpret. When I’ve finished an album, as far as I’m concerned I’m handing it over. I very strongly feel that the role of music is for people. I like making music, but I make it to give away and so at that giving-away point, I don’t mind what people take from it, as long as they get something. It feels like it’s not mine any more – and that’s a nice feeling, music is an incredibly sharing experience,’ she adds enthusiastically. ‘Original folk music came from the people writing music for the people, to sing with each other and strengthen one another. Some sort of recognition of the conditions we live is enormously life-affirming and can keep you going.’

What kind of music has been keeping you going lately? ‘Most recently, it’s been The Fall!’ Harvey almost hoots, as if it’s the maddest thing ever. ‘But I go back to my staple diet since I was a kid, which is still my baseline, and that’s Howlin’ Wolf, Captain Beefheart and Hendrix. If I go on tour, I make compilation tapes of those people because I have to play it all the time. It reminds me of who I am and what I’m doing.’

Harvey reveals that for some time now she’s been doing other writing, to help her songcraft. ‘I’m dreadful prose and poetry writer,’ she claims, ‘but it interests me enormously, so I try and make headway with it.’ Not being good at something doesn’t stop you from doing it, then? ‘No, it almost interests me more, because I keep tripping up and when you keep doing that, you make some incredible mistakes that can be really exciting.’

Most people are held back by a fear of failure. Why not you? ‘I don’t know,’ says Harvey. ‘I’ve just always been someone who pushes herself hard. Not in a whipping-myself-across-the-back kind of way, but in an excited way, wondering what I might find. The feeling of satisfaction if you do feel you’ve achieved what you set out to do is so rewarding. It’s about trusting your gut instinct too, and seeing that thing through. ‘It probably stems from coming from a very hard-working family,’ she adds, ‘because it’s what I saw around me, growing up. My parents work really hard and never rest and, in some ways, they’re never satisfied. My father quarries stone out the ground and breaks it down into housing materials. He’s done the same job for 40 years – we joke about being in the rock business! – and my mother sculpts in stone, but she’s also dedicated to the countryside. She works in the garden, which is huge and beautiful, and she’s made it into this wild landscape.’

Harvey herself deferred a place in a three-year sculpting course at St Martin’s. Given its physicality, sculpting was an interesting choice. ‘It’s similar to how I make music,’ she claims. ‘There’s a fine line between the two. It’s the taking away of things that aren’t needed. My sculptures were minimal and ambitious, large-scale and usually hung from the ceiling. They involved great physical difficulty for someone who was small. I guess I liked the physical nature of it, otherwise I wouldn’t have thrown myself into it and ended up damaging myself quite so often!’

Harvey no longer has the time or need to sculpt. ‘Music has really overtaken as my primary love, she affims. ‘I feel absolutely devoted to it and don’t feel like I’m lacking in other areas.’

Would you say there’s an element of compulsion in your music? ‘Definitely. Compulsion, urgency... it’s like breathing to me, making music. I do it every day and I don’t feel right if I don’t. I could not not play music. I would probably very quickly feel ill, get a disease and die!’ PJ Harvey laughs. She’s joking, clearly. And also entirely serious.