PJ Harvey: greatness and avoiding it

PJ Harvey‘s previous album ‘Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea’, that won her a well deserved Mercury Music Prize, is supplanted by… Well, ‘Uh Huh Her’ is nothing like it, unsurprisingly, because this lady’s never taken an easy route, compromised, God forbid - seized an opportunity…

Polly Jean Harvey’s always been a brave artist. While her comparatively happy 2000 album found the singer flirting with the mainstream, ‘Uh Huh Her’ finds her turning away: she needs not receiving some overdue recognition for inspiring such musical progeny as the White Stripes, The Kills, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, because this woman has distinct mind-set, creative urges to purge.

Raw and fearlessly unpolished, ‘Uh Huh Her’ is a cathartic album by a woman who has got a score to settle, a bitter heart to unburden. Where ‘Stories’ found Harvey celebrating a love that made her feel eternal, ‘Uh Huh Her’ finds her long after that love is lost. Harvey is pathologically private about her personal life, though there have been documented sightings [and admissions] of dating singer Nick Cave and actor Vincent Gallo. Whatever the case, someone appears to have hurt her, and this sometimes angry, aggressive and brooding album is the result.

Witness memories of being lied to (‘The Life and Death of Mr. Badmouth’) and “feeling burned” (‘The Darker Days of Me & Him’); once grandly romantic, Harvey now regrets loving too much (‘Shame’). This is no pity-me collection due to PJ's phrasing and specific delivery that suggest there's more to the stories than she's telling, mischief lurking in the lyrics.

The CD is produced to sound un-produced, with few sonic details or flourishes other than Harvey's voice and guitar. There are, of course, other instruments (a tambourine on ‘The Pocket Knife’, an accordion on ‘The End’), but they're obscured by PJ. She shouts, wails and screeches amid the barrage of “Who the F**k” and on the raucous ‘Cat on the Wall’, but outside of those moments, her force is in her fragility and her determination to strip the music down to essentials and let her emo-system resound.

With some tracks being just brief interludes - cries of seagulls, a snippet of folk song (‘No Child of Mine’) - adds to the ‘Uh Huh Her’ minimalism. Dark and rumbling guitars are reigned in by the quiet closing numbers, ‘The Desperate Kingdom of Love’ and ‘The Darker Days of Me & Him’, with PJ’s resignation to her love-situation.

Until the next time she falls in love… If you’ve been waiting for the simultaneously released Corrs’s new album than this will not affect the Irish sisters (and a tragic bro) outfit’s fame or its sales. ‘Uh Huh Her’ is an infinitely more interesting listen nonetheless.

Although, for all its bravery - and it is the first for PJH - an average album.

7/10