Off to see PJ Harvey tomorrow night for, I think, the tenth time, which seems like a lot but in fact is woefully inadequate over 32 years. But hey, it’s not my fault she doesn’t come here all that often, and took nearly a decade to appear for her first Australian shows.
Though, yeah ok, it may be my fault the police have a watching brief over my (alleged) stalker tendencies.
Anyway, as she’s nearing the end of the tour, which began in Perth just over a week ago, and took in a couple of festivals before getting to her two nights at Sydney Opera House (outdoors …urgh!), Wind Back Wednesday prepares the ground with a night in 2012 (indoors … yay!) where little was said but everything happened.
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PJ HARVEY
State Theatre, January 18, 2012
DARKNESS WOULD FALL and silence would reign. No word of introduction or conversation, no acknowledgement of either applause or the usual fatuous things shouted by audience members who think space is something to be filled by them.
Then a low wattage light would come on, shining only on the upturned face of PJ Harvey, the shape of an autoharp, and later in the night a guitar, visible. And she would begin to sing again.
Sometimes that voice would be high, flutey and tremulous, as when she confessed "I pretend to myself ... what formerly had cheered me, now seems insignificant" in The Devil; sometimes it would merely be keening and trebly, as in the dangling, jangling opening of Let England Shake.
Though she dropped down occasionally, for much of the night it was kept in a range which was deliberately narrow and echoey and just weird enough to discomfort some: we weren't to be given easy outs.
It was much the same for the sonic palette of John Parish and Mick Harvey, on vocals, various guitars, keyboards, samples and percussion, and Jean-Marc Butty, on drums and vocals. They extracted sounds which ranged from guttural (Harvey’s bass in The Words That Maketh Murder, was predatory and imposing) to high reaching (the fuzzed and chiming guitar combination of In The Dark Places was like being pricked and vigorously scrubbed simultaneously).
And there were times when Butty’s drums drove furiously, relentlessly, as when Pocket Knife saw floor toms pounded hard and Bitter Branches had a North Korean martial feel only partly offset by the marimba sounds on the keyboards.
But at all times, everything served the atmosphere, the quite specific world created on stage: a distant time which seemed altogether too fresh and pungent, with its smell of sweat and death and looming upheaval and fear, to be consigned to the past. After all, sweat, death, upheaval and fear sounds as much 2012 as 1915 or 1256, just as the folk roots of On Battleship Hill stretched backwards and forwards from the stinking trenches.
So, the men were dressed like Edwardian workers just back from the Sunday service and she - in black robes and a leather front panel like pre-iron age armour, dark feathers in her hair and pale skin luminescent – was a mix of warrior witch and priestly crow.
The music made you want to dance with the corpses in The Glorious Land, grind your hips against the truth in Down By The Water (here arranged for organ, percussion and a never idle threat) and think twice about the darkness as The Silence pierced the room.
This was another place altogether and few artists would imagine or attempt a show like this. Is there anyone who could do it as powerfully and completely as PJ Harvey?
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PJ Harvey plays:
Sydney Opera House forecourt – March 13
Brisbane Convention Centre – March 15
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