08.31.07 From the Vixen
Music > All You Need to Know to Love PJ Harvey
Written by Marie Lascu
Before Jack White rebirthed garage-rock blues PJ Harvey had it covered. The Brits have a knack for recycling and reinventing American music, and no one’s been doing it as well as Miss Polly Jean Harvey for the last fifteen years.
Landing on our glory-filled shores during the early 1990s rock-chick boom, Harvey managed to cut herself such an expert niche that no other female musician worth noting since can escape a comparison.
She was made for music, groomed to channel it through every ounce of her being without the restrictions of a conservatory. In the seventies her bohemian parents sheltered a revolving door of musicians in their English countryside home. All they ever requested of their temporary tenants was that they give their wee girl music lessons. By the age of eleven Polly Jean could play the guitar, violin, piano, drums, accordion and more. At seventeen, she was already an old hand at the club circuit, playing guitar in several bands. It wasn’t long before she desired to be the ringleader of her own rock circus.
In 1991, at the ripe age of twenty-two, Harvey slinked out her first album Dry on Too Pure records in the UK, and left critics in awe. Utilizing the hype, she got herself signed to Island Records and gave the rest of the world her booming, raw, and at times ethereal voice. Despite suffering a near nervous breakdown, Harvey unleashed Rid of Me in 1993, a stripped down, woman-done-wrong, alt rock punch in the face, now being considered one of the most influential albums spawned in the 90s. Her searing and unpretentious guitar riffs expertly compliment her visceral vocals.
Harvey managed to release another critically lauded album in 1995, the dark cabaret blues explosion To Bring You My Love. Harvey refers to this period of her life as her lowest point emotionally, but she managed to squeeze in hit single Down By the Water and a relationship with kindred spirit Nick Cave. The following year saw the release of a more experimental affair with longtime friend and collaborator John Parish called Dance Hall at Louse Point. By 1998 Harvey released Is This Desire?, a critically underrated melancholy affair with electronic influences. She would reveal years later that the album marked a point where she no longer knew if she wanted to continue with music, and dabbled with the idea of becoming a nurse in Africa. She wanted to do anything that would make her feel useful to the world, but once you make a pact with the guitar it doesn’t let up easy, and by 2000 she was back in line.
PJ Harvey holds the distinction of being the only solo female artist to win the Mercury Prize, an annual award given to the best British or Irish album of the year, for her most commercially successful album Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, in 2001. Harvey also maintains the distinction of being the one musician in all of creation who makes Courtney Love jealous without eliciting an avalanche of violent shit-talking. Who else can make such a claim? In fact, Love has never said one negative thing about Harvey, even going so far as to deem Rid of Me far more influential than that one album, Nevermind.
Harvey is the kind of artist that makes you feel lazy, and Courtney Love is clearly not exempt. At thirty-eight, Polly Jean is still kicking hard and set to drop her eighth studio album, White Chalk, on September 24 in the UK and September 25 in the U.S. Song titles like The Devil, Dear Darkness and Broken Harp are the kind that give longtime fans a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. The beauty of Polly Jean is that every album is different enough to facilitate varying tastes. I guarantee that anyone can find enjoyment in at least one Harvey offering, even if you don’t accept her whole catalogue of grunts, howls and wails.
There can be no doubt that she is in it for the long haul. Hot on the heels of her prolific heroes Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, she’s the kind of woman you wish would grace the cover of SPIN or Rollingstone more often than what’s-their-faces. Mainstream or not, the world is a better place because PJ Harvey is still rockin’ out.
She was made for music, groomed to channel it through every ounce of her being without the restrictions of a conservatory. In the seventies her bohemian parents sheltered a revolving door of musicians in their English countryside home. All they ever requested of their temporary tenants was that they give their wee girl music lessons. By the age of eleven Polly Jean could play the guitar, violin, piano, drums, accordion and more. At seventeen, she was already an old hand at the club circuit, playing guitar in several bands. It wasn’t long before she desired to be the ringleader of her own rock circus.
In 1991, at the ripe age of twenty-two, Harvey slinked out her first album Dry on Too Pure records in the UK, and left critics in awe. Utilizing the hype, she got herself signed to Island Records and gave the rest of the world her booming, raw, and at times ethereal voice. Despite suffering a near nervous breakdown, Harvey unleashed Rid of Me in 1993, a stripped down, woman-done-wrong, alt rock punch in the face, now being considered one of the most influential albums spawned in the 90s. Her searing and unpretentious guitar riffs expertly compliment her visceral vocals.
Harvey managed to release another critically lauded album in 1995, the dark cabaret blues explosion To Bring You My Love. Harvey refers to this period of her life as her lowest point emotionally, but she managed to squeeze in hit single Down By the Water and a relationship with kindred spirit Nick Cave. The following year saw the release of a more experimental affair with longtime friend and collaborator John Parish called Dance Hall at Louse Point. By 1998 Harvey released Is This Desire?, a critically underrated melancholy affair with electronic influences. She would reveal years later that the album marked a point where she no longer knew if she wanted to continue with music, and dabbled with the idea of becoming a nurse in Africa. She wanted to do anything that would make her feel useful to the world, but once you make a pact with the guitar it doesn’t let up easy, and by 2000 she was back in line.
PJ Harvey holds the distinction of being the only solo female artist to win the Mercury Prize, an annual award given to the best British or Irish album of the year, for her most commercially successful album Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea, in 2001. Harvey also maintains the distinction of being the one musician in all of creation who makes Courtney Love jealous without eliciting an avalanche of violent shit-talking. Who else can make such a claim? In fact, Love has never said one negative thing about Harvey, even going so far as to deem Rid of Me far more influential than that one album, Nevermind.
Harvey is the kind of artist that makes you feel lazy, and Courtney Love is clearly not exempt. At thirty-eight, Polly Jean is still kicking hard and set to drop her eighth studio album, White Chalk, on September 24 in the UK and September 25 in the U.S. Song titles like The Devil, Dear Darkness and Broken Harp are the kind that give longtime fans a warm and fuzzy feeling inside. The beauty of Polly Jean is that every album is different enough to facilitate varying tastes. I guarantee that anyone can find enjoyment in at least one Harvey offering, even if you don’t accept her whole catalogue of grunts, howls and wails.
There can be no doubt that she is in it for the long haul. Hot on the heels of her prolific heroes Bob Dylan and Tom Waits, she’s the kind of woman you wish would grace the cover of SPIN or Rollingstone more often than what’s-their-faces. Mainstream or not, the world is a better place because PJ Harvey is still rockin’ out.
