PJ Harvey - The restless fable of Polly Jean

Polly Jean is the girl with the coldest hands and the warmest lips

I've ever known.

(Nick Cave)

At the start of her career, when she was generously dubbed "the new Patti Smith", Polly Jean from Yeovil (England) replied with no shortage of cheek: "Patti who?" At the time, in fact, echoes of the poetess of rock resounded powerfully through PJ Harvey's work - especially in her vocal timbre, dark, intense, bent by the visceral violence of her emotions. A style forged by the history of rock and blues, yet bearing an equally strong personal stamp.

To break through, PJ needed special effects - not so much on the music as on her look. Scarlet lipstick, dark-lady makeup, breathtaking jumpsuits, faux-leopard-skin skirts and feather boas accompanied her for a long time in her theatrical shows, crowning her the femme fatale of British rock. "It was just a mask for me," she explained, "it helped me exorcise a very difficult time in my life. But it was all fake, constructed. Now I've changed, and onstage I feel like myself, the same as when I go shopping."

Even more than the look and the provocative poses, it was her lyrics that caused scandal: a mix of feminist slogans, religious anguish and racy stories, all steeped in an obsessive ambiguity. Just a taste to start with: “Ho giaciuto con il diavolo/ ho maledetto il buon Dio/ rinunciato al Paradiso/ per portarti il mio amore” (from "To Bring You My Love", her big hit from 1995); or the ode to the loss of virginity in "Happy And Bleeding" (1992); and then "Angelene", the story of a prostitute featured on Is This Desire? from 1999: “Amore per denaro è il mio peccato/ Ogni uomo che chiama lo lascio entrare/ Rosa e bianco sono i miei colori/ Ho una bella bocca e occhi verdi”. A repertoire worthy of a "damned" singer-songwriter, drawing on the canons of Tom Waits and, above all, Nick Cave, Harvey's true male "alter ego". This time PJ can't deny it: "The first time I heard one of his records I was 18. I was blown away by his songs and I didn't listen to anything else for a long time. His music touched certain parts of me so powerfully... Later, I was shocked to learn that he was a heroin addict." Once the shock wore off came their meeting, sealed in the magical duet "Henry Lee" (on Nick Cave's album "Murder Ballads"), and a brief but destructive relationship (every female figure portrayed on "The Boatman's Call" refers to her).

The story of the pale Polly Jean almost reads like a textbook tale for a rising rockstar: a thin, nervy, vaguely misfit girl, daughter of free-spirited parents, as open-minded about the world as they were careless about raising a family. Add to that the "obscurantist" backdrop of Dorset, deep in the English countryside, hardly given to eccentricity. "I was a restless, prickly girl who spent a lot of time alone, painting, building things and playing with animals," Polly Jean herself has recounted. And it was her parents' hippie culture, as members of the "Flower Power" movement, that brought her close to music. She started out playing saxophone in experimental groups like Bologna and Automatic Dlamini, where she met John Parish, later her great artistic partner. Finally she settled on guitar, and in 1991 formed a trio with bassist Steve Vaughan and drummer Robert Ellis.

In October 1991, her debut single for the independent label Too Pure thus arrives: the explosive “Dress”, voted single of the week on Melody Maker at the time by John Peel, who admired “the way Polly Jean seems weighed down by her own songs and arrangements, as if the air were literally being sucked out of them… admirable, though not always enjoyable”.

In 1992 Harvey releases her debut solo album, Dry, split between raw “riot-grrrl”-style ballads and intimate confessions. The protagonist of her songs is an uninhibited, sex-obsessed girl bordering on nymphomania. The trick is to hit the listener right in the gut, overwhelming them with obscene come-ons and clattering guitars, with screams and flattery, with violence and ecstasy, stunning them with a sonic cocktail as rough and depraved as it is, ultimately, calculated. Backing PJ in a kind of “power trio” are bassist Stephen Vaughan and drummer Robert Ellis.

On the opening track, “Oh My Lover”, the provocation is openly “bisexual”: rather than giving up her lover, Polly Jean proposes he love both her and her rival at the same time (and, behind the faux-feminist posturing, openly aims to win over the male audience…). “Happy And Bleeding”, on the other hand, is a raw ode to the loss of virginity, yet another sexual soliloquy from a murky, angry chanteuse who vents all her insecurities in her sexual soliloquies.

In the tour de force of “Sheela-Na-Gig”, the ferocity of the sound frames a mocking portrait of the fertility goddess of Celtic culture, while in the closing “Water” an aching sensuality takes over. Backed by bassist Stephen Vaughan and drummer Robert Ellis, Harvey presents herself as a murky, angry chanteuse who vents all her insecurities in her sexual soliloquies. The album will go on to feature in the “essential albums” lists of several specialist publications.

You leave me dry

No water well in sight

No water at my sides

(“Dry”)

On the cover of her second album, Polly Jean appears topless from the waist up, shaking her wet hair in the air, in an image by her friend and photographer Maria Mochnacz, shot in the bathroom of her Bristol home. Rid Of Me (1993), produced by Steve Albini, changes course, pushing into hard-rock and grunge territory. The result isn't always fully convincing, especially when the naive fervour of “Dry” (whose refrain “You leave me dry” is clearly meant in sexual terms) gets lost in the excess fury of the arrangements. What does come through, at least, is Harvey's humour, capable of sardonic slogans, some genuinely provocative (“Rub ‘Til It Bleeds”), others frankly far-fetched (“Douse hair with gasoline”).

Polly Jean screams and moans like someone possessed, through wails, whispers and distorted howls, openly drawing on her muse Patti Smith, to whom the music press of the time was quick to compare her. The cover of Dylan's “Highway 61 Revisited”, with its “biblical” undertones of love and horror, almost seems to foreshadow the themes Harvey would tackle on her third album. But the anger of “Rid Of Me” is one that strikes straight at the heart. And the powerful anthem of the title track finally reveals a mature songwriter capable of probing the depths of despair with the grit of a true blues girl.

Shortly after the album's release, a sort of de-Albini-fied second version comes out, 4-Track Demos, which includes a few previously unreleased tracks.

Forsaken heaven

Cursed god above

Lay with the devil

Bring you my love.

(from “To Bring You My Love”)

The definitive consecration for the Dorset singer-songwriter comes in 1995 with To Bring You My Love. On the cover, Polly Jean appears floating in the water, like a modern Ophelia out of Millais, or perhaps like the reincarnation of some enchanting nymph.

The raw punkette of her early days has transformed into a femme fatale, possessed by a new demon: that of an atypical blues, with biblical and gothic accents. Victim and executioner at once, PJ thus completes her definitive metamorphosis, severing the ties with her turbulent adolescence and plunging into a deeper, and no less painful, cathartic journey straight into adulthood.

For the operation to succeed, though, a musical turn is also needed: hence the dissolution of the power trio formed with drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Steve Vaughan, and the launch of a proper solo career. The deus ex machina is Flood, who from the control room inspires a different way of writing and arranging. But a decisive contribution also comes from the "bad seed" Mick Harvey and guitarist/composer John Parish, with whom the English singer-songwriter will establish a long-lasting and fruitful collaboration.

The scraped-bare, dissonant punk of her early work turns into a denser, more layered alternative rock, though still harsh and vibrant, destined to become one of the trademarks of the '90s. With a richer instrumental palette - organs, vibraphones, strings, percussion of every kind, the occasional injection of electronics - and with the menacing shadow of Cave always lurking around the corner. But the true protagonist of the album remains her, Polly Jean, an angelic and obscene muse, as frail in body as she is powerful in her performances, able to move effortlessly from hushed (but always treacherous) lullabies to thundering invectives, from the gasps of orgasm to the death rattles of the underworld.

It falls to the static guitar chords of the title track to open the proceedings, in an atmosphere that bodes nothing good: Polly Jean presents herself as a mysterious, diabolical lover who has sold her soul to the devil in exchange for love: “Forsaken heaven/ Cursed god above/ Lay with the devil/ Bring you my love”. Verses spat out in guttural, cavernous tones worthy of Diamanda Galas, closing in a chilling vibrato, suspended over an obstinate guitar riff and a handful of organ chords. No less lurid is the protagonist of "Meet Ze Monsta" - pure garage-blues nymphomania, all distortion and metallic clangour - and the voodoo witch of the sulphurous "Long Snake Moan", her eyes bloodshot (and passion-filled) as she extols the serpent's orgasm. Equally blasphemous is the prayer of "Teclo": restrained suspense, eros and thanatos entwined in a funereal litany in which PJ invokes a dead deity to take her with him into the grave ("Just let me ride on your grace for a while"). Her voice is a blade that tears open wounds: it seduces, hypnotizes and violates with unsettling naturalness.

The spiral of madness culminates in the chilling murder ballad "Down By The Water", where, amid hitherto unheard (and thoroughly successful) electronic textures, Harvey inhabits the role of the doomed blue eyed whore who drowns her daughter in the river's waters, only to repent and whisper the sinister closing nursery rhyme ("Little fish, big fish, swimming in the water/ Come back here, man, gimme my daughter"). A frighteningly powerful and evocative track, with its distorted pulses and malignant melody: it would also serve as the album's lead single, helped by a video striking enough to throw open MTV's doors.

But horror and depravity are not all that runs through the grooves of "To Bring You My Love". In her universal feminine blues rosary, Polly Jean also slips into the humble, downtrodden shoes of the factory worker in the funk-inflected "Working For The Man", driven only by the strength of her beloved ("Get my strength from the man above"); she chases a precarious bond with motherhood in the morbid "I Think I'm A Mother"; she finds herself an unwed mother praying for the return home of the man who got her pregnant (the heart-wrenching, gorgeous acoustic ballad "C'mon Billy"); or again gives voice to the tender, abandoned lover of "Send His Love To Me" - a splendid folk ode and cornerstone of many of her post-2000 albums - who sobs "This love becomes my torture/ This love, my only crime", turning to her own parents to get back the love she has lost forever. A weeping that turns to rage and anguished cries in the closing "The Dancer", the last, desperate plea of a gentle maiden (literally), over a bed of hammond organ and Spanish guitars, for peace to return to her "black and empty" heart ("Bring peace to my black and empty heart"). A goosebump-inducing finale, for an album that, in the end, is nothing less than a universal hymn to human fragility and the desperate yearning for love and redemption.

With To Bring You My Love - more than a million copies sold - PJ Harvey establishes herself as a star of global rank, a worthy heir to the lineage of Patti Smith and her descendants, but at the same time a new muse of an enormously influential female-fronted rock: legions of subsequent singer-songwriters would have to reckon with her.

In the meantime her voice has grown more refined, able to move across two or three different timbres, being rough and smooth at once. "I started taking singing lessons in 1991," she explained, "and my teacher at the Royal College in London tried to train my voice in a classical way without worrying about my job as a rocker. I learned a lot singing classical pieces, it opened my mind."

In this period she also begins experimenting with her image, adopting an elaborate, theatrical style in her shows: whereas before she used to appear at concerts in simple black T-shirts, camouflage trousers and Doc Martens, bare-faced and with tousled hair, now she sports vamp-style make-up and uses stage props like brooms and a lit-up microphone in the style of Ziggy Stardust. She will, however, deny any reference to a drag-queen style in her image, which she will describe as "Joan Crawford on acid". And crowning this great period for PJ comes the long-awaited duet with her idol Nick Cave (on the murder ballad "Henry Lee"), out of which a brief romantic relationship will also blossom.

PJ Harvey, in short, never stops, driven by her dreams ("they're so intense I can't tell them apart from reality") and by a fatal attraction to everything troubled and unsettling, including "men with big problems". The David Bowie-esque metamorphoses and theatrics become rarer. But in her concerts, a flamboyant talent for dance and mime still shines through. A growing fame follows her, turning her into the icon of an "alternative" generation fed on pulp comics and (post-)grunge urban decadence. A success sealed in 1999 with Is This Desire?, a classic "mature album" poised between noir ballads, rock and techno, like the gripping single "A Perfect Day Elise", which also earns her a new little spot on MTV's mainstream stage.

But giving the album its backbone are also tracks like "The Sky Lit Up", "The River" (dedicated, like the b-side "Memphis", to her late friend Jeff Buckley) and the mournful title track itself, mumbled in a trembling register charged with intensity. Fascinated by certain rawer, darker sides of techno, Harvey increases the role of the synths, making them downright funereal, as in the ballad "The Garden", which could easily be considered a "dark" track.

Is This Desire? marks the peak of the English singer-songwriter's dark lyricism and the most advanced stage of her musical maturation. With the rough edges smoothed out and the wordiness of her early days refined, Polly Jean presents herself as a finally multifaceted and complete songwriter.

In New York there's a mass of energy that transforms artistically into dream. It's very different from London. New York is much more down-to-earth, people let themselves get more involved. London is more reserved and detached.

(PJ Harvey)

A confirmation, albeit a partial one, also comes with the next, much-discussed album (critics hailed it, many fans remained unconvinced), Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, twelve songs tackling the contrast between frenetic New York and placid Dorset, bringing PJ back to a sunnier dimension, as a "classic" songwriter. "The title refers to physical places, but also mental ones, inside my head," she recounts. "In 1999 I spent six months in New York. I wasn't familiar with the place and I ran into a new reality, which set off a learning process. It's one of the hubs of the world, a meeting point for people, cultures, buildings, works of art... There's a mass of energy that transforms artistically into dream. It's very different from London. New York is much more down-to-earth, people let themselves get more involved. London is more reserved and detached."

The result was an album much simpler and more direct than its predecessors. An album made of understated songs, of ballads and stories, like "This Mess We're In" (a duet with Thom Yorke) and "Good Fortune", so vibrant it almost sounds like it could be sung by Patti Smith herself. "These are self-contained songs," she explains, "little films with a beginning and an end. I wanted to go back to the roots of songwriting, creating songs that could stand on their own."

What clearly emerges on this record is that Polly Jean is in love, and perhaps for the first time it's a love lived in a positive way, one that makes her throw her bad luck off the top of a skyscraper and dance in circles ("Good Fortune"), that makes her chase her lover, stark naked, all around the house ("This Is Love"), that makes her build a nest and keep on singing ("A Place Called Home").

But New York doesn't bring only an electrifying lightness - proof of that is the opening track "Big Exit", inspired by America's obsession with firearms. "It represents the other side of city life, which isn't just creativity. It was incredible to hear the news about shootings and deaths every day. In my first few weeks in New York, there was a madman pushing people under subway trains. He killed six people in two weeks - it was terrifying. Then I went back to the English countryside, and that song became a way of confronting fear, like a good part of the album."

And through all of this, Polly Jean's dark side inevitably surfaces too. The album closes with "We Float", one of the record's high points, a dark and oppressive track that explains how "keeping the smile that holds a model" isn't enough to mask the total lack of communication within a couple in crisis.

Sculpture has been my hobby since my university days. I go and collect materials on the beach and then use them to build something, but it's just a game.

(PJ Harvey)

With the shock songs behind her and the unruly libido of her early days reined in, it's now time for reflection for this slight country riot-grrrl, raised among cows, chickens and hippie gatherings around the fire, who later moved to a small town on the English coast, surrounded by green hills. She keeps company with only a small circle of friends. She says London is too "frantic".

In the life of this slender chanteuse with pale skin and raven hair, however, rock isn't everything. She's passionate about art ("In London," she says, "I spend almost all my time in galleries") and also tries her hand at sculpture: "It's been my hobby since my university days. I go and collect materials on the beach and then use them to build something; it's just a game, nothing serious." Her love of the visual arts also leaves its mark on her songs: "My writing method is strongly influenced by images. I put myself in a role or a situation, like in a film, and then set it to music. Sometimes I'm also inspired by photos I take." PJ Harvey has already settled her debt to cinema with a brief appearance in Sarah Miles's short film "A Bunny's Tale", and with her portrayal of Mary Magdalene in Hal Hartley's "The Book Of Life" - the director who had already used some of her songs in the film "Amateur" and who would go on to direct the video for "Crawl Home" by Desert Sessions, on which PJ guests. In the film, a modern retelling of the story of Christ, Magdalene is Jesus's companion and bodyguard. "It was an extraordinary experience," she recalls, "and it helped me find new inspiration for songs; after filming I always had something to write and turn into music. Now I'd like to compose a soundtrack for a film." A few years ago, it would have been a porn film; now it could even be a noir by David Lynch.

Meanwhile, alongside her collaboration with Nick Cave, she has worked with Tricky (on the track "Broken Homes" from the album "Angel With Dirty Faces", in which Tricky pays tribute to the songwriter by using lines from "Oh My Lover" in the track "Anti Histamine"), Giant Sand (on the album "Cover Magazine"), Pascal Comelade, Marianne Faithfull (five of the ten songs on the album "Before The Poison" are credited to PJ Harvey) and with John Parish on the experimental project Dance Hall At Louse Point (1996). The latter reveals Harvey as a true-blooded bluesgirl ("Rope Bridge Crossing", the cover of "Is That All There Is?"), as a mournful priestess in the vein of Diamanda Galas ("Taut"), but also as a fierce rockeuse ("City Of No Sun", "Urn With Dead Flowers"), while the acoustic "That Was My Veil", the first single released, and the poignant "Civil War Correspondent" mainly confirm that PJ has a soul.

We're in 2004 when PJ Harvey returns to her roots with Uh Huh Her, a raw folk-blues record that harks back to the minimal sounds of her early days. Polly Jean does everything herself - writing, production, recording, mixing - and plays every instrument, with only Head helping out at the mixing desk and Rob Ellis handling drums and percussion. The result is a collection of lo-fi confessions, shot through with an ironic streak that shows up more as a languid bitterness (the muted grievances of "Shame", the whispered threats of "The Pocket Knife") than in the racy outbursts of old (“Take the cap/ Off your pen/ Wet the envelope/ Lick and lick it” from "The Letter" leaves little room for interpretation). Harvey has matured as a musician and instrumentalist; the guitar is no longer her only weapon: "It's You", for instance, boasts a lovely piano line, "Shame" a delicate organ backdrop, "The Slow Drug" trip-hop synth pulses in the vein of Is This Desire?, while "You Come Through" even evokes exotic scenery, with its African tribal xylophone and keyboards.

But the record always follows the same well-worn path: an alternation between visceral outbursts and aching ballads, all within the twelve bars of the blues. And it's a true-blooded blues girl who sings the opening "The Life And Death Of Mr. Badmouth", driven along by an obsessive guitar riff. The loud-mouthed rockeuse is still there too, and she's the star of two of the collection's best tracks: the swaggering hardcore of "Who The Fuck?", torn apart by Polly Jean's distorted vocals and three or four explosive riffs, and the forceful single "The Letter", which, along with "Cat On the Wall", seems most closely tied to the "stoner" experience of Josh Homme's "Desert Sessions", which Harvey recently took part in.

More often, though, Polly Jean prefers to slip into a subdued register, picking up her acoustic guitar ("The Desperate Kingdom Of Love", at once light and austere, and "The Pocket Knife", a link to the folk-rock of Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea), or sketching out spare ballads like "The End" (dedicated to her friend, actor and musician Vincent Gallo), "The Darker Days Of Me & Him", a mournful elegy on the aftermath of a breakup, and a preview of "No Child Of Mine", a song written specifically for Marianne Faithfull and later included on "Before The Poison"...). A sequence that isn't without interest, but perhaps too long for the melodic arsenal available to the dark lady of Dorset. The lyrics are, as usual, steeped in a Cave-like noir lyricism, distilled to its essence in the menacing "The Pocket Knife".

Uh Huh Her is a realistic snapshot of the current PJ: no more tricks, just a reprise of a somewhat self-referential songwriting style, whose only real fault may be that it has left listeners a little too accustomed to it.

As soon as I'm left alone

The Devil wanders into my soul

(“The Devil”)

Meanwhile it becomes clear that Polly Jean is still enjoying a healthy romantic relationship, but a major flaw in the songwriter also emerges: that of being so in love that she becomes totally dependent on her man. A flaw that would prove fatal when the relationship ended: White Chalk (the title refers to a striking area of Dorset), released in September 2007, is an album of utter solitude, in which Polly Jean is now defenseless. An intimate record, composed on piano, where the mood is clear right from the cover, showing Polly Jean in a "spectral" guise, with photos that look more like devotional cards than promotional material. The record of a lonely woman baring herself, wallowing in her own tears, without ever being needlessly dramatic or whiny.

The band is there, but barely audible: you can just about make out the harpsichord, the keyboards, the harp, some electronic touches, and their presence risks going unnoticed because everything revolves around Polly Jean's torment, never so exposed on any of her other records. A record of absolute solitude: in the introductory, all-encompassing "The Devil" ("As soon as I'm left alone - The Devil wanders into my soul"), in the cryptic "The Piano" ("Oh God I miss you"), in "To Talk to You" (an open letter to her grandmother, who died during the making of "Uh Huh Her") and in "Before Departure" (a suicide's farewell letter). Special mention goes to "When Under Ether", the first single released, wonderful in its melody.

White Chalk is a record so stripped-down it's almost perfect, missing only a touch of the melody that had so enriched Is This Desire?.

2006 also saw the release of Please Leave Quietly and The John Peel Sessions. The former is a DVD put out reluctantly, after giving in to pressure from fans and the record label. It isn't the recording of a single concert but an ensemble piece meant to show the viewer just how repetitive life on tour can be. The Peel Sessions are also disappointing: due to PJ's well-known perfectionism, they're not complete, and some vocals may even have been "touched up".

In 2009 the unshakeable duo of PJ Harvey and John Parish, by now approaching their silver wedding anniversary as collaborators, returned to work on what amounts to the spiritual sequel to Dance Hall At Louse Point — not coincidentally titled A Woman A Man Walked By (though, to be fair, it's really an imaginary menage a trois completed by Flood, who'd already been with them thirteen years earlier). An intense, direct, salacious album.

You can tell right from the opener and single "Black Hearted Love", a 90s-indie rush with an anthemic, almost FM-radio feel. "Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen" confirms it straight away, a duet for banjo and acoustic guitar, sickly and spasmodic folk, with PJ reaching back to the most unhinged vocal performances of her adolescence. And while the autoharp on "Leaving California" and "The Soldiers" evokes neo-Victorian atmospheres, on the explosive title track Parish recharges the batteries of his vocal shape-shifting (spoken, guttural, falsetto, screaming) in a sort of dazzling post-feminist hymn to masculinization that swarms all the way to the electro-percussive close worthy of psychedelic kabuki (titled "The Crow Knows Where All The Little Children Goes"); the tribal paleo-grunge of farfisa and guitar on "Pigs Will Not" rises to the same apocalyptic tones. "The Chair" packs dub basslines, kraut rhythms, guitar restarts and church-like ascents into two and a half minutes; "April" and "Passionless, Pointless" merge downtempo electronics and dream-folk, with PJ mesmerizing the scene like a strangled soprano caught in the embrace of the Phantom of the Opera.

What is the glorious fruit of our land?

Its fruit is deformed children

What is the glorious fruit of our land?

Its fruit is orphaned children

("Glorious Land")

And once again it's John Parish, alongside the equally trusted Flood and Mick Harvey, co-producing (and playing on) what can in every respect be considered the successor to White Chalk.

Let England Shake (2011) was recorded, of all places, in a church, but it doesn't retread the atmospheres of that stripped-back, intimate album; that ethereal creature who used to whisper, shut away in her solitude, about devils, spirits and suicides, and who declared her love for her native Dorset, here brings her cathartic journey to an end and returns to speaking with others, buoyed by an unexpected burst of extroversion. Freed from her demons, or driven mad by too much anguish, PJ Harvey's voice takes on the lightheartedness of childhood. She sings about something as universal as the brutality of war, but with the tender, and at the same time detached, gaze of a child.

It's neither anguish nor rage that dominates here (with the exception of the swirling crescendo of "All And Everyone" and the nervy "Bitter Branches", one of the few tracks, along with "In The Dark Places", that might satisfy longtime fans). The driving acoustic rhythms lend the record a folk flavor and, at times, a paradoxically breezy or even comical atmosphere, as in the fanfare of "The Words That Maketh Murder".

It's an album that feels old, almost rural, culminating fittingly in a measured ballad with traditional tones, "The Colour Of The Heart" (a duet with Parish); listening to it is like flipping through an old photo album, its black-and-white pictures yellowed by time, trying to imagine their colors, suggested here and there by the jingle-jangle of the autoharp that underpins several tracks, by the scattered forays of a baritone sax, by the sampled trumpet sounding the muster in the propulsive "The Glorious Land", or by the Middle Eastern vocal line layered over Harvey's own biting delivery on "England".

Having donned a sonic garb that now feels out of time, PJ Harvey takes on the allure of a more classic, mature storyteller, who no longer needs to shout to be heard, but lets her songs speak for themselves, buoyed by a melodic accessibility that never cheapens the sophistication of her intent.

In mid-April 2016 came The Hope Six Demolition Project, the natural follow-up to the widely acclaimed "Let England Shake" (which focused on the horrors of World War I), and the second chapter of the anti-government crusade waged by the new PJ Harvey. But let's start with the premise, and above all with the compositional process, which unfolded in an unusual way, through public sessions held in London inside an installation at Somerset House, where fans, after buying a ticket, could watch the rehearsals for forty-five minutes from behind a glass wall. The luckiest among them got to witness live the genesis of some of the songs we can now all hear in finished, definitive form. As for the themes tackled, the album is the result of travel notes the author compiled between war zones (Kosovo, Afghanistan) and the city of Washington, trips that had already produced the book of poems "The Hollow Of The Hand", born from a collaboration with photographer Seamus Murphy. It was in Washington that the "Hope VI" demolition project was launched (hence the album's title), through which housing projects were redeveloped by tearing down old buildings and relocating the low-income families who lived in them. The discontent that resulted inspired the lyrics of "The Community Of Hope", which opens the tracklist, blending a rounded musicality -- I'd venture to call it alt-pop -- with sharp-edged writing that lashes out at institutions, accused of putting speculation at the center of their plans, favoring unchecked consumerism (the Wal-Mart chain is name-checked at the end of the song) over the real needs of the population.

The author plays on this contrast far more than in the past, often seeking out the juxtaposition between joyful rhythms (this is a musically rather colorful record, in many ways recalling the brightness of "Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea") and the grim drama of the scenes she describes. But the lush arrangements (the saxophones that punctuate and give incredible vitality to so many passages are wonderful), the formal perfection of the recordings, and the extraordinary quality of the musicians involved can't make up for the loss of that sense of urgency that oozed from the Dorset singer-songwriter's early releases -- the wilder, more nonconformist, and often controversial ones that used to spark long debates. Today the scenery becomes more aseptic, detached, and there are few genuine chills running down the spine, except perhaps when she opts for a return to guitar minimalism, as in one of the record's best moments: "The Ministry Of Defence".

Not that there's a shortage of genuinely successful episodes, like the full-blooded, driving sequence of "Medicinals" / "The Ministry Of Social Affairs"; it's also a point of national pride to spot, among the credits for tracks 1 and 4, the names of "our own" Enrico Gabrielli (it's about time his talent were recognized beyond Italy's narrow borders) and Alessandro "Asso" Stefana, who hold their own alongside other heavyweight collaborators such as Linton Kwesi Johnson, Terry Edwards, Mike Smith, James Johnston and Alain Johannes, alongside the ever-present John Parish, Flood and Mick Harvey.

We're looking at a project that completes the migration of Polly Jean's poetics from the analysis of inner worlds (especially female ones) found in her early albums to the socio-political critique she has preferred in recent times. It's all assembled through a melting pot of styles ranging from the blues-like structures of "Chain Of Keys" to the gospel flavours of "River Anacostia", blending images of contemporary wars ("A Line In The Sand" is dense with references to conflicts, "The Wheel" tells of thousands of missing children) and urban tales ("Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln").

"Dollar Dollar" is the final snapshot of this reportage: a child begging for money, knocking on the window of the car carrying tourist Polly Jean through anything-but-recommendable territory. Now, many have read between the lines of this whole affair a bit of a cop-out: touring war zones with bodyguards, or visiting working-class neighbourhoods while watching them through the closed windows of a taxi, in order to gather material for future songs, is something that leaves room for debate. Any form of protest song steeped in social conscience is always welcome, but to many it rings truer when it comes from the inside (Kendrick Lamar?) rather than from a well-to-do passer-by, intent on observing through the rear-view mirror while preferring to drive away.

The 2016 vintage of Polly Jean goes all in on socio-political critique, but loses all the communicative urgency of her early records, eliminating almost every trace of sonic "dirt" to give her music a glossier image. The result is certainly an interesting and accomplished project, but one in which the depth of the compositions never quite reaches the level of her best past work. Not that we expected to find among these grooves a new "Meet Ze Monsta" (from the masterpiece that definitively launched her in 1995, To Bring You My Love) or "Who The Fuck" (from the last step of PJ the real rocker, the lo-fi Uh Huh Her from 2004)... hmm... but yes... deep down, maybe we were still hoping for a little of that.

As she approached thirty years of her career, a reissue campaign began for all of Harvey's albums, each accompanied by demo versions of every track they contain, a format through which the artist allows listeners into her compositional process, revealing the essence of every single song. To close out this titanic undertaking, in November 2022 a rich retrospective boxset was released, B-Sides, Demos & Rarities, 59 tracks spread across three CDs or six vinyl records: rarities and alternate versions dug up from across the English singer-songwriter's entire career, never included on any of her official albums. It starts with five home recordings dating back to the period before the release of her debut album and goes all the way up to her most recent work for film and TV. From "Dry" to "Peaky Blinders", it's a travel diary summing up the numerous stylistic and aesthetic transformations Harvey has gone through over three decades, an excursion through the different moods that have defined each album.

Despite a gradual and steady evolution that has taken her from the raw fury of the Nineties, when youthful rage ran strong (just listen again to the previously unreleased "Why D'Ya Go To Cleveland"), to the more introspective ballads of today, the selection on offer here always maintains its own homogeneity, its own internal coherence. There are plenty of unmissable moments, many of them already well known to fans, including a couple of extracts from the Peel Sessions already released in the past, and the moving "Memphis" and "30", written by Harvey to remember her friend and peer Jeff Buckley in the wake of his untimely death. The final act is reserved for the recent cover of "Red Right Hand", a song originally recorded by her friend Nick Cave in 1994 (it appeared on Let Love In), reinterpreted with wisdom and the utmost respect.

The writing of "Orlam", a narrative poem written in Dorset dialect and edited by Don Paterson, led PJ towards new music and sonic territories not yet explored. Written in just three weeks, the lyrics of her tenth studio album I Inside The Old Year Dying pick up exactly from there, immersed in a world made of oppositions and rites of passage between light and shadow. Drawing inspiration from the best of English literature, from Shakespeare's dramaturgy to the Romantic poets John Keats and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, as well as from biblical imagery, the singer-songwriter slips between the concepts and primal impulses of love, growth, loss and death. The poem's transformation into music came about with the help of longtime friends and collaborators Flood and John Parish: a live studio was set up, where the process of creation and that of recording intertwined, making room for greater improvisation and a free flow of ideas, with instrumentation stripped down to the bone. Harvey, Parish, Flood and Adam "Cecil" Bartlett carried out various experiments with keyboards, analogue synthesizers and little else. But the true star instrument is PJ's bare voice, shaped and moulded like clay on every track, in order to best convey the feelings and themes expressed within it. The resulting sound fuses indie-folk/rock and minimalism, with small slowcore and art-rock leanings. It's a clear change of course, both sonically and lyrically, compared to the previous The Hope Six Demolition Project and Let England Shake, although the former had already begun looking towards poetry, driven by the need to find a new balance and the desire to make music from a different and genuinely fulfilling perspective, one that went beyond simply making an album with an accompanying tour, following a creative process aimed at crafting true "images for the ear".

The incipit of "Orlam", "Prayer At The Gate" is a thin, razor-sharp blade of grass, held up entirely by PJ's tone, steeped in an almost ancient despair, showing the fragile boundary between life and death, marking the start of a new cycle. The concentric ritual dance of the autumn equinox in "Autumn Term" brings percussion and dry guitar notes to the fore, along with some additional recordings taken from audio libraries, while the melodic "Lwonesome Tonight" shifts the focus to an April night spent thinking of a loved one, drawing inspiration from Elvis Presley's "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" and from the Gospel of John. We move on to the vaguely jazzy pace of "Seem An I", enriched by overdubbed choirs and undulating guitars that evoke a mood somewhere between the sixties and the seventies, before plunging into the synthetic mechanisms of the hypnotic, abstract "The Nether-Edge", and the skeletal folk guitar of the spectral, November-hued "I Inside The Old Year Dying". The midpoint of the journey is marked by the dark, muffled atmosphere of "All Souls", through whose folds dark omens creep, which then give way to the more intense "A Child's Question, August", featuring the voice of actor Ben Whishaw, a well-known face from film and theatre, and an interpreter of roles closely tied to the world of literature, including that of the poet John Keats himself in Jane Campion's film "Bright Star". The sense of redemption instilled by the previous track lingers on through the colder, more distant notes of "I Inside The Old I Dying", which instead features Colin Morgan, another artist who splits his time between film, television and theatre. The fragmentary flickers of guitar carried off by the wind in "August" hand us a towering, slowcore-tinged rendition of "Wicked Game" with goth undertones, once again as a duet with Whishaw; while John Parish steps in on the disturbing, Luciferian "A Child's Question, July".

The curtain falls on the unexpected, whirling guitar distortions lashing through the harsh "A Noiseless Noise", a track inspired by a poem by Keats, which pushes into noise and industrial territory. Spontaneous, human, and at the same time lofty and restless, I Inside The Old Year Dying is a welcoming refuge for the soul, outside of time and space, with which Polly Jean has managed to surprise us once again, reshuffling the deck for the tenth time. A middle-earth populated by ghosts and silent torments seeking peace after the storm.

Contributions by Simone Coacci ("A Woman A Man Walked By"), Stefano Fiori ("Let England Shake"), Claudio Lancia ("The Hope Six Demolition Project", "B-Sides, Demos & Rarities") and Martina Vetrugno ("I Inside The Old Year Dying")

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