PJ Harvey @ State Theatre,Sydney (18/01/12)

Mon 23rd Jan, 2012 in Gig Reviews

“WE LOVE YOU POLLY” a lone voice calls out. It’s inappropriate. The isolated figure, left of stage, isn’t PJ Harvey. Bound in an oily black corset and heavy dark layers the woman on stage is a nameless narrator. A storyteller. A mouthpiece for England’s past to confess its sins and its horrors.

You can’t blame the audience for nervy outbursts. Silent stretches between songs are gaps people can’t bear to leave unfilled. Pauses are seconds long, but they bookend sorrowful stories that make the chest tight and the skin anxious. Snorts, strange noises and proclamations of love are a clumsy attempt to connect with the people on stage.

PJ says nothing, sings everything. Sometimes she’s swallowed by the outer reaches of the stage; disappearing like so many faceless men lost in battle. Sometimes she is a flat, hollow silhouette of inhuman form. Feathers and angles create a shadowy portent of death.

Whether cradling an autoharp or brandishing a guitar PJ sings in unearthly pitches, charting a tonal path that never ceases to needle the conscience. There is constant tension between words and sound. The sound is often sprightly, delirious even ( Let England Shake is bug-eyed and wired). It’s also devastatingly beautiful (the blooming coda of All & Everyone causes blissed-out people to sink deep into their seats). These emotional responses collide with the tough, clear-eyed accounts of broken bodies and ruined men. It’s easy to be seduced by Written on the Forehead’s woozy sensuality; easy to be shaken by the image of people swimming through “10,000 tonnes of sewage; fate written on their foreheads”.

The silence between songs is entirely appropriate. What can you possibly say after referencing deformed children and soldiers falling like lumps of meat. Aside from a small ‘thanks’, the three men to the right of PJ are also mute. Dressed in riding breeches and knee-high boots, they sit in a jumble of wood and battered instruments lit by quiet sepia tones. They lend voices, play guitar and elicit the sound of brass, flute and strings from a sorry looking (but remarkable sounding) keyboard.

Clipped beats are unadorned and simple, but played with an ear that understands the difference between sincerity and parody. When the drummer stands at the front with a military snare slung around his neck, he hits a slow reverential death march worthy of the fallen Louis in The Colour of the Earth.

The thoughtfulness that ensures wartime motifs are ever present but unobtrusive is a huge reason why this performance is so affecting. Whether it’s the searchlights that swivel on accusatory heads, skittering over the audience or the dry-ice that resembles a foggy, damp morning in the Somme, the impact is always profound, never trite or ill conceived.

The Polly Jean who slinks and curves around the microphone during Pocket Knife reminds me of the woman who gouged out small filthy songs for Uh Huh Her. There are echoes of the red-lipped, raven-haired version in Down By The Water – the one who whispers a nursery rhyme evocation to the daughter she murdered. But singing about a desperate, bitter love for her country during England sounds like the most personal thing she’s ever written.