PJ Harvey

Lying in the water, raven hair, eyes closed, lips scarlet like the shimmering dress she wears. Down by the water. Perhaps the river where the terrible infanticide of the title track takes place, perhaps the baptismal font in which - across the whole album - she tries to cleanse herself of all her sins. This is how Polly Jean Harvey appears on the cover of “To Bring You My Love”. Like a modern Ophelia by Millais, or perhaps the reincarnation of some enchanting nymph.

The raw, feral punkette of “Dry” and “Rid Of Me” has transformed into a sophisticated femme fatale, possessed by a new demon: that of an atypical blues, with biblical and gothic overtones. Hardly a random choice, since blues embodies, more than any other genre, the idea of pain and the ceaseless tension between guilt and atonement. This is blues of an entirely feminine stamp, though, built along that blood-red line that ideally links Billie Holiday and Janis Joplin. Hence the metaphors on pregnancy, the sexual exorcisms, the more or less explicit allusions to archetypal figures such as Eve (the serpent of “Long Snake Moan”), Medea (the murderous mother of “Down By The Water”) or Hecate (the underworld deity invoked in “Teclo”).

Victim and executioner at once, PJ thus completes her definitive metamorphosis, cutting ties with a turbulent adolescence and plunging into a deeper, no less painful, cathartic journey straight into adulthood. Paradoxical for an artist who at the time described herself as lost.

Here comes (the) Flood

For the operation to succeed, though, a musical turning point is also needed: hence a complete overhaul of her line-up, with the dissolution of the power trio formed with drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Steve Vaughan, and the start of a proper solo career. The deus ex machina is Flood, who from the mixing desk inspires a different way of writing and arranging. But a decisive contribution also comes from "bad seed" Mick Harvey and guitarist/composer John Parish, with whom the English singer-songwriter would establish a lasting and fruitful collaboration.

The sound changes too, then. The stripped-back, dissonant punk of her early days turns into a denser, more layered alternative rock, 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 odd injection of electronics - and with the menacing shadow of the bard Nick Cave - her future artistic (and romantic) partner - always lurking around the corner.

But the true star of the record remains her, Polly Jean, angelic and obscene muse, as frail in body as she is powerful in her performances, effortlessly ranging from hushed (but always treacherous) lullabies to thundering invectives, from the gasps of orgasm to the death rattles of the beyond.

The devil's lover

It falls to the static guitar chords of the title track to open the dance, in an atmosphere that bodes nothing good, as do the first words uttered by the protagonist: "I was born in the desert/ I been down for years/ Jesus, come closer/ I think my time is near". 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". Lines spat out in guttural, cavernous tones worthy of Diamanda Galas, closing in a chilling vibrato, suspended over a persistent guitar line and a handful of organ chords.

No less lurid is the mastermind behind "Meet Ze Monsta" - pure garage-blues nymphomania, all distortion and metallic clangour ("What a monster/ What a night/ What a lover/ What a fight") - or the voodoo witch of the sulphurous "Long Snake Moan", eyes injected with blood (and passion) as she extols the serpent's orgasm ("Raise me up Lord/ Call me Lazarus... It's my voodoo working"). 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 rips open wounds: it seduces, hypnotises and violates with unsettling ease.

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.

A female blues rosary

But there is not only horror and depravity among the grooves of "To Bring You My Love". In her universal female blues rosary, Polly Jean also slips into the humble, downtrodden shoes of the working woman in the funky "Working For The Man", driven only by the strength of her beloved ("Get my strength from the man above"); she pursues a precarious bond with motherhood in the morbid "I Think I'm A Mother"; she finds herself an unwed mother praying for the return of the man who got her pregnant (the poignant, 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 records - who sobs "This love becomes my torture/ This love, my only crime", appealing to her own parents to get back the love she has lost forever. A cry that turns into rage and anguished screams in the closing "The Dancer", the final, 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 ("So long day, so long night/ Oh Lord, be near me tonight/ Is he near? Is he far?/ Bring peace to my black and empty heart"). A goosebump-inducing finale, for a record that is ultimately 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 established herself as a star of global standing, a worthy heir to the lineage of Patti Smith and her descendants, while also becoming the new muse of an enormously influential female-fronted rock: legions of subsequent singer-songwriters would have to reckon with it. But even the Dorset maiden's own future evolutions - from the intriguing electronic solutions of "Is This Desire?" to the folk-pop war diary of "Let England Shake" - would build on the foundations of this filthy ten-song set. Ten fire-red seals, for one of the most intense, captivating and representative records of the Nineties.

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05/05/2019