It's been four years since PJ Harvey's last album, and yes, if you're wondering, she's still got the voodoo. She'll be bringing her trademark guttural growls and witchy howls to Avalon this Saturday.
Her new album "Uh Huh Her" was written, performed, mixed, recorded and produced by Harvey herself, with the sole exception being long-time collaborator Rob Ellis on drums. The album, which came out in June, has been nominated for the American Shortlist prize (the U.S. equivalent of the Mercury Music Prize, which she won in 2001 for "Stories From The City, Stories From the Sea").
Harvey is in a rare category among artists - one that entails consistently putting out compelling albums over the course of more than a decade. Her first album, "Dry"(1992), was fantastic stripped-down rock that allowed Harvey to air some of her dirty laundry and develop some of the blues riffs and punk energy that really took form in the album's follow-up, "Rid of Me"(1993).
"Rid of Me" was lethal, ferocious and unabashed in its exploration of Harvey's psyche and sexuality. The tunes were relentlessly explicit, aggressive and largely punk-influenced.
Having already released the majority of her pent-up energy and frustration, she applied slightly more polish to her sound and delivered her 1995 album, "To Bring You My Love," considered by many in the industry to be her breakthrough album. It lost none of Harvey's power in its elegance, while the string arrangements, church organs and shades of flamenco brought depth to sentiments merely pounded out in the first two albums.
Her next album, "Is This Desire"(1998) saw a calmer Harvey losing some of her patented intense introspection, this time looking outwards. The gut-grinding bass gave way to smooth percussion, while the punk riffs were replaced with rippling piano melodies.
Yet Harvey's most mainstream album by far was 2000's "Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea." A huge Dylan fan, Harvey gives in to his folk stylings while also making them strikingly upbeat.
In "Uh Huh Her", the listener finds a medley of her earlier sounds. The punked-up "Who The F**k" immediately takes the listener back to her "Rid of Me" days and resuscitates old themes of non-conformity: "I'm not like other girls/You can't straighten my curls." She visits this theme again in the softer, yet just as lethal, "Pocket Knife": "Can you see my pocket knife/You can't make me be a wife."
Gone are the abstract character sketches and obtuse lyrics of "Is This Desire" and the bold cheerfulness of "Stories." The blues-punk riffs and primal howl are intact, but they soon give way to quieter, mostly acoustic tunes, in which Harvey trades in her vicious, '"50 ft. Queenie" persona for that of a fireside strummer. Emotions float close to the surface and are easily accessible, like the melancholy in "Darker Days," as Harvey repeats: "Promises, promises/I'm feeling burned."
The more personal feel is not surprising, given that Harvey returned to her hometown of Yeovil, England to make this album. While misconceptions seem to abound of Harvey as a brash, loud-mouthed hipster, her more permanent alter ego seems to be that of a girl from the English countryside who professes a love for gardening. Yet this certainly does not detract from the energy and brilliance or her work.
While there isn't the rawness of "Dry," Harvey's new album remains powerfully minimalist. Old fans will just need to give "Uh Huh Her" a few listens to find themselves sucked back into the strangely beautiful, gutter-world of Polly Jean Harvey.
