PJ Harvey

Polly Jean Harvey distinguishes herself among the singer-songwriters who achieved recognition amid the alternative rock surge through her singular voice and broad critical regard. Across her body of work she has ranked among the most singular and impactful composers of her generation, confronting subjects of intimacy, faith, and societal concerns through unflinching directness, wry wit, and dramatic presentation. Early efforts delivered raw material with intense force, exemplified by the 1993 release Rid of Me. In subsequent years her sound grew more layered and wide-ranging. The 2001 album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea blended elements of trip-hop, guitar-driven rock, and singer-songwriter traditions, securing the Mercury Prize. Harvey kept altering course, shifting to the spectral Victorian atmosphere of White Chalk in 2007 and then to the atmospheric political reflections of Let England Shake in 2011, the latter making her the sole performer to claim the Mercury Prize a second time. With the enigmatic, folk-inflected landscapes of the 2022 epic poem Orlam and its 2023 musical counterpart I Inside the Old Year Dying, her ability to construct enveloping environments stayed unmatched.

Raised on a sheep farm in Yeovil, England, by a father employed in quarrying and an artist mother, Harvey acquired guitar and saxophone skills as a youngster before joining several groups during adolescence. She entered Automatic Dlamini, John Parish’s Bristol-based endeavor, in 1988, contributing saxophone, guitar, and backing vocals on tours across Europe behind the debut album The D Is for Drum. She further participated in the band’s unreleased follow-up Here Catch Shouted His Father. Although she departed the ensemble in early 1991 to launch her own venture, she maintained ongoing work with Parish throughout her subsequent projects. Forming the trio PJ Harvey alongside former Automatic Dlamini colleagues drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Ian Oliver, with Steve Vaughan later replacing Oliver, the group made its first public appearance in April before relocating to London in June, where demos were cut and submitted to outlets including the experimental indie label Too Pure. October 1991 saw Too Pure issue the debut single “Dress,” which ignited indie rock enthusiasm alongside the follow-up “Sheela-Na-Gig,” both earning extensive acclaim within the British music press.

Too Pure launched PJ Harvey’s first full-length Dry in March 1992. Captured at Yeovil’s Icehouse Studios on a budget below $5,000, the record drew widespread international praise and climbed to number 11 on the U.K. Albums Chart. An extensive tour ensued, ending with a slot at that summer’s Reading Festival. Shortly afterward Harvey settled in London and came close to a nervous breakdown under the intense scrutiny directed at her next album. Later in 1992 the band signed with Island Records, and in December they entered Cannon Falls, Minnesota’s Pachyderm Recording Studio with Steve Albini to track the sophomore effort. Albini applied his signature loud, guitar-centric approach, aligning with the record’s sharper lyrical edge. Released in May 1993, Rid of Me achieved major critical success and broadened Harvey’s following substantially: it reached number three on the U.K. Albums Chart, earned silver certification, entered the upper reaches of the Billboard Heatseekers Chart, and peaked at 158 on the Billboard 200. Touring in support featured Harvey in a faux leopard-skin coat and feather boa, underscoring her growing theatrical bent.

Once the Rid of Me tour concluded in August 1993 the trio dissolved. Harvey’s initial solo outing arrived in October with 4-Track Demos, presenting her original recordings of the Rid of Me material. Like its predecessor, 4-Track Demos garnered strong reviews while achieving commercial visibility, climbing to number 19 on the U.K. Albums Chart and number 10 on the Billboard Heatseekers Chart. For her third album she composed material at the Yeovil residence purchased with earnings from her early releases and worked in the studio with producer Flood along with bassist Mick Harvey, guitarist Joe Gore, and Parish. The expanded lineup yielded a fuller, blues-inflected sound, and To Bring You My Love was celebrated as a landmark by numerous critics upon its February 1995 appearance. Ample press coverage together with robust MTV and modern rock radio backing for the single “Down by the Water,” which reached number two on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart, helped the album register moderate commercial impact; it debuted at number 40 on the Billboard 200 and number 12 in the U.K., later receiving silver certification. Harvey spent the entirety of 1995 on the road in support. The next year she supplied vocals to Nick Cave’s Murder Ballads and joined Parish for Dance Hall at Louse Point.

Harvey initiated work on her fourth album in 1997, reconvening with Ellis and Flood for an introspective collection that introduced electronic textures. The outcome, September 1998’s Is This Desire?, earned a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Performance. The album reached number 54 on the Billboard 200 and number 17 on the U.K. Albums Chart, while the single “A Perfect Day Elise” attained number 25 on the U.K. Singles Chart, her strongest placement there at the time. That year Harvey also entered acting, portraying a contemporary Mary Magdalene in Hal Hartley’s The Book of Life and appearing as a Playboy Bunny in Sarah Miles’ short film A Bunny Girl’s Tale, where she performed the Is This Desire? outtake “Nina in Ecstasy.” Two years later she reunited with Ellis and Mick Harvey for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. This more direct set of songs, written across Dorset, Paris, and New York, incorporated multiple collaborations with Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Harvey’s fifth album became one of her strongest commercial and critical successes, reaching number 23 on the U.K. Albums Chart, eventually certified platinum, and capturing the Mercury Prize as the first female solo artist to do so. It additionally received a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Album, while the single “This Is Love” earned a nomination for Best Female Rock Performance.

Following extensive touring behind Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, Harvey divided the ensuing two years between developing fresh material and working with sympathetic peers. She contributed to Gordon Gano’s Hitting the Ground, Giant Sand’s Cover Magazine, and John Parish’s How Animals Move, yet her most visible partnership came via the Queens of the Stone Age offshoot the Desert Sessions. She appeared on more than half of 2003’s Desert Sessions, Vols. 9-10, including the single “Crawl Home.” During this interval she recorded her sixth album. Taking production reins and performing every instrument except drums, again handled by Ellis, Harvey issued Uh Huh Her, a visceral collection echoing aspects of her earliest recordings, in May 2004. The album climbed to number 12 on the U.K. Albums Chart and earned silver certification in Britain soon after release, while its lead track “The Letter” reached number 28 on the U.K. Singles Chart. In the United States it peaked at number 29 on the Billboard 200, Harvey’s highest-charting release to that point. Uh Huh Her garnered a sixth Brit Awards nomination and a fifth Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music Performance. Two years later the live DVD On Tour: Please Leave Quietly documented performances from the Uh Huh Her tour dates.

In November 2006 Harvey commenced work on her seventh album. Partnering once more with Flood, Parish, and Eric Drew Feldman inside a West London studio, she pursued an entirely different path. Abandoning guitars for ethereal piano-centered ballads, White Chalk appeared in September 2007 and reached number 11 in the U.K. and number 65 in the U.S. After touring the album, during which she added autoharp to her instrumental arsenal, she resumed her collaboration with Parish on A Woman a Man Walked By, which entered the U.K. Albums Chart at number 25 upon its March 2009 release. That year she also composed music for director Ian Rickson’s Broadway staging of Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler.

In 2010 Harvey, alongside Flood, Parish, Mick Harvey, and drummer Jean-Marc Butty, began tracking her eighth album inside a church near Dorset. Let England Shake merged years of poetry and lyrics Harvey had written concerning World War I and the early twenty-first-century conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan with largely spontaneous studio performances. Upon its February 2011 arrival the album received broad acclaim, securing another Mercury Prize, again making her the only artist to win twice, and claiming Album of the Year at the 2012 Ivor Novello Awards. It also performed solidly on the charts, peaking at number eight on the U.K. Albums Chart and number 32 on the Billboard 200. Late that year Let England Shake: 12 Short Films by Seamus Murphy compiled the films photographer and director Seamus Murphy created to accompany the album. Around the same period Harvey contributed to the score for a Young Vic production of Hamlet. The following year she released “Shaker Aamer,” addressing the Guantanamo Bay detainee who conducted a four-month hunger strike. That December she presented her poetry publicly for the first time at the British Library.

For her ninth album Harvey journeyed to Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Washington, D.C., accompanied by Murphy. Their partnership yielded the 2015 volume The Hollow of the Hand, gathering her poems alongside his photographs. Working again with Flood and Parish, Harvey captured portions of the record in public at London’s Somerset House cultural center. The finished work emerged as The Hope Six Demolition Project in April 2016. The album ascended to the top of the U.K. Albums Chart and received a Grammy nomination for Best Alternative Music. In June 2017 Harvey issued “The Camp,” a collaboration with Ramy Essam benefiting children fleeing the Syrian Civil War. The following March she and Parish released “Sorry for Your Loss,” honoring former Sparklehorse leader and Harvey collaborator Mark Linkous. Her score for director Ivo van Hove’s stage adaptation of All About Eve appeared in April 2019. The music drew from Franz Liszt’s Liebesträume, a recurring motif in the original film, and included songs performed by the production’s leads, Gillian Anderson and Lily James. That June her score and the song “The Crowded Cell” featured in director Shane Meadows’ Channel 4 miniseries The Virtues. In November Murphy’s documentary on the creation of The Hope Six Demolition Project, A Dog Called Money, reached theaters.

In 2020 Harvey launched an extensive reissue program encompassing demo editions of each album together with fresh artwork. Dry returned that July, followed by Rid of Me and 4-Track Demos in August and To Bring You My Love in September. The re-release of Is This Desire? arrived in January 2021, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea the next month, and Uh Huh Her in April. The campaign extended into the following year, with Let England Shake and The Hope Six Demolition Project surfacing in January and March 2022 respectively. That April brought the publication of Orlam, an expansive coming-of-age poem weaving West Country rituals, superstitions, and Dorset dialect. Several months later she supplied a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Who by Fire” as part of the score she crafted with composer Tim Williams for Sharon Horgan’s series Bad Sisters. That November the archival series concluded with B-Sides, Demos, & Rarities, assembling previously unreleased and scarce recordings spanning her entire career.

Harvey’s subsequent album, July 2023’s I Inside the Old Year Dying, enlarged upon the characters and atmospheres first presented in Orlam while incorporating references to the Bible and Shakespeare. Produced once more with Parish and Flood, the music arose partly through improvisation and merged soothing folk, electronics, and field recordings with bursts of abrasive rock.