PJ Harvey knows exactly how much each of her songs weigh.
The soft, flittering folky genius of numbers like “Lwonesome Tonight” and “Autumn Term” paint a wistful walk in Dorset’s woodlands with Harvey’s newfound penchant for world-building so achingly tender and lightweight.
2023’s I Inside the Old Year Dying cracked open the spectral ballads that remained deep in the endlessly award-winning artist’s soul, pushing away from the reproachful punk that ties much of her discography and placing her amidst a starry crop of common alders. Her thoughtful foray into nature grounded Harvey’s unquestionable wisdom as she laid bare her soul via the fictional Ira-Abel, a nine-year old heroine navigating an intense coming-of-age story.
And so as she stands so mesmerisingly ageless at the tail-end of Sydney Opera House’s acclaimed Forecourt series, Harvey draws us deeper into her most recent, more poetic works. Between her pagan-like gestures and agile movements, she projects her voice upwards towards the iconic sails of the Sydney Opera House while smoke swirls around to recreate the misty woods of rural England.
Her gestures are skyward, lifting over the sea of adoring long-time fans to complement the dream-like quality of her latest form in an endless procession of artistic transformation. Part of Harvey’s brilliance, and a big reason why she’s the only two-time Mercury Prize-winner in history, is her outright rejection of treading the same ground.
The most impactful musicians have constantly reinvented themselves through their career. Constantly. Instead of falling in love with their own reflection, they’ve taken a destroy-and-rebuild approach to themselves and their art. Bowie, West, Yorke, Lamar, Beyonce.
Some, like West, have pushed their art so far into the realm of incalculable psychosis and ignoble grandiosity, while others steadied themselves righteously on their journey towards perpetual change. Harvey unquestionably falls into the later.
While she’s one of the very few examples of a famous musician who has managed to keep her private life largely hidden from the masses, existing outside of the singular “how do you live with yourself?” evil that is tabloid journalism, there’s little doubt that Harvey is very much a benevolent force.
Her gracefulness is a big part of the show, powered by wild movements that dramatise and add height to the weightless songs that pepper the first half of her set. These perfect parcels of poetry hold some of her most revealing and beautiful songwriting in over a decade and so giving them their own distinct, ritualistic atmosphere is necessary.
Accompanied by John Parish, James Johnston, Jean-Marc Butty, and Giovanni Ferrario, Harvey manages to keep things entirely and utterly organic while building the pace. Her set list is constructed so that the weight of her songs becomes heavier and heavier, anchoring her back down to earth where her gestures become more direct and pointed towards the crowd.
“50ft Queenie” is our first real peek at the “old” PJ Harvey, brash and exciting as the show’s pulse starts to race. That rambunctious punk of yesteryear reveals herself slowly with jagged riffs and heady reverb. She was playing with Tori Amos at one point, now she’s hanging with Karen-O.
Although she doesn’t go as heavy as she could.
Harvey and her long-time collaborators are able to restrain those harder, more rollicking classics with the concert’s hushed tone. The throaty grunge of “Down by the Water” is easily recognisable but its characteristic muddiness is muted and reshaped for the set’s gentler textures. But it’s no less impactful, set against her iconically disquieting refrain of big fish and little fish. It’s hard to make such a brash story of filicide sound beautiful. But then again, it’s hard to understand just how exceptional PJ Harvey has remained since 1992’s Dry.
Closing the main set, “Bring You My Love” is a deeply satisfying rendition of a timeless signature, reflecting much of what framed the set to being with, progressing in weight and scale by constantly building to an abrupt end.
An almost unnecessary two-song encore of fan-favourites “C’mon Billy” and “White Chalk” felt like PJ Harvey breaking away from any specific meaning and just giving us two great songs to close the night. And while I love both, the set would have been more effective as a concept if she ended it with the main set.
Then again, who in their right mind would complain about more PJ Harvey?
Photos by Pete Dovgan for the AU review. Check out our full PJ Harvey gallery.
FOUR AND A HALF (OUT OF FIVE)
The reviewer attended this performance on Thursday, 13th March.
