CityLife

PJ Harvey + John Parish

PJ Harvey and John Parish

POLLY is barking and the Ritz is baying for more. Up in the balcony we watch agog her canine capers during the Beefheartesque Pig Will Not.  

Wuff, wuff, she hollers as she whirls barefoot in her black smock frock, more like some feisty terrier than any bitch that could do you real mischief.  

More terrifying, though is the strident A Woman A Man Walked By, title track of PJ Harvey and John Parish’s new album.   

‘Chicken liver balls, chicken liver spleen’ she howls at her song’s male victim before threatening to sodomise him in graphic language that recalls the playful pretend psychotics of her one-time lover Nick Cave.  

Posh Devon burr  

Could this be the same demure lass, who warmly salutes the audience in her posh Devon burr and sits on stage after a splinter has apparently pierced her naked sole, lamenting almost childishly ‘I trod on something prickly’.  

You wonder why her (let’s be kind) mature band in their grey suits trilbies aren’t taking more care of her.  

Prickly was apt for the setlist bravely built around the two albums on which she has collaborated with John Parish 14 years apart. It ranges wild and weird.  

Maybe the opener, Black Hearted Love, is the kind of indie noir stomper that hoisted her above cult status in the late Nineties, but the moment Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen kicks in, a ‘look who’s missing’ spookfest against a banjo backdrop, we are adrift on the swirling tide of PJ’s lyrical disorientation.  

Falsetto whine  

Live, the material is more touching than on record. Her falsetto whine on the strange California and the sparse ukulele-driven Cracks In The Canvas are only bettered by the closer, April, which becomes a waiflike torch song.  

Behind the rock brimstone is the gentleness and real sense of self-irony we have sometimes ignored as she explored the mutating PJ personae.  

It is no coincidence in both album and tour she shares the billing with brilliant guitarist and arranger Parish. His presence in the studio and stage obviously liberates her muse.  

I just wanted to rush on stage with a jar of foot ointment, not an impulse I’ve had at the Ritz before.