October 9, 2001

PJ Harvey : Glasgow Barrowlands

Everyone says I love you, but no-one says it with quite as much carnal glee as Polly Jean Harvey

Everyone says I love you, but no-one says it with quite as much
carnal glee as Polly Jean Harvey. In the scramble to find the most apposite title
for Somerset's most difficult daughter, it's often forgotten that Harvey is Lust's
finest ambassador. Now, with the Mercury Prize-winning 'Stories From The City,
Stories From The Sea', we find her in the throes of a rebirth. It's an album rich in texture
and brimming with fresh confidence; a sigh of lyrical - and musical -
gratification after the breathless, confused, neo-industrial clamour of
'Is This Desire?'. It's also the closest the raven-haired songstress has come to sounding
happy.

The
likes of the dark 'Down By The Water' and the formally
spindle-limbed 'Send His Love To Me' are remade and
remodelled into primal roars of self-confidence. Opener
'One Line' reverberates
with cavernous drums and fathomless longing, and 'Sky Lit
Up' drags itself from
the depths of the Mississippi mudflats to Patti Smith's
bathroom floor. 'The Whores Hustle
and the Hustlers Whore' follows on a giant wave of unearthly
avant-noise, with Harvey
shrieking and whirling across the stage; it's 'The Wicker Man''s
Willow via Liza
Minnelli.

If her flirtation with the once-elusive mainstream has stirred
any personal
unease, it doesn't show. Indeed, Harvey's toothsome grin and
hand-clapping, crowd-rousing chutzpah suggests the songwriter has found her spiritual home; that
all previous
roads - from the bare-faced angst-maiden of 'Dry' to the predatory,
glassy-eyed vamp
of 'To Bring You My Love' - were destined to lead here.

Tonight, the relationship between city and country, which has powered
Harvey's muse
since her 1991 debut tore open the decade, is
as pronounced
as ever. 'Big Exit' melts into 'Dry',
limbs and lyrics entangled in New York City
gloss and delta grit, while the Television-ish 'This Is
Love' becomes a bedside companion
piece to earthy, libidinous paean 'Man-Size' ("Lick my
legs/I'm on fire").

This new, New York groove fits her like a fingerless
lace glove.
While most great female songwriters eventually find themselves
canonised, only in
PJ Harvey will saints and sinners alike find
their guiding light.

Sarah Dempster