Troxy, London
The hottest new war poet doesn't look much like those of a century ago. In place of the clipped moustache that Wilfred Owen modelled in countless tattered school anthologies, PJ Harvey wears a headdress of black plumes. Streaming over her head, they call to mind an East End funerary horse, or Mercury bringing seriously bad tidings.
On the first of her two sold-out nights in this elegant art deco venue in London's easternmost parts, she wore black. Tonight she is in a gilled white dress that simultaneously suggests a Valkyrie bride and haute couture bandages. None of these associations are accidental, you suspect. Harvey's earliest output may have been more transparently personal ? think of the wracked and honest Dry and Rid Of Me albums, and their unadorned live presentations. But since the vampish theatre of To Bring You My Love, Harvey's latter-day works have often (but not always) been exquisitely crafted communications.
Tonight her every glance feels choreographed. Harvey stands well away from her band, swapping between autoharp and a series of guitars, while the waistcoated trio of Mick Harvey, John Parish and drummer Jean-Marc Butty busy themselves playing vintage gear arranged on wooden pews. And yet this performance is no less visceral for being precise.
From Harvey we have long had rushes of lust and its opposite, plenty of doomed love, and a drowned daughter. "Down By The Water" and "C'Mon Billy" are two well-loved old songs included tonight, full of desperation and murderous intent. Now, on her latest album, Let England Shake, Harvey has got her teeth into the horror of war with all the graphic fury of Owen's "Dulce Et Decorum Est". Harvey has never been squeamish about body parts ? hair, bones, "dirty-pillows" and the vulvas of sheela-na-gigs ? and on "This Glorious Land" she has turned her attention to "deformed children"; on "The Words That Maketh Murder", severed arms and legs hang from trees.
Older generations have long sneered that, since punk, there has been little protest music. They might have missed the low-key rebellion inherent in everything Radiohead do nowadays. But even if Let England Shake works at more sophisticated levels than mere agitation, it is hard to miss its disgust at man's lemming-like bellicosity. There are points tonight ? "On Battleship Hill", say ? where a quiet weep wouldn't be out of the question. The song's deep sorrow at the madness of war is beautiful enough, but the richness of its sense-impressions are almost overwhelming. Harvey's crystalline soprano sings about the scent of thyme; the serene chug of guitars carries with it the song's lyrical fascination with landscape, how it slowly returns "to how it's always been" once the guns are rolled away. Mick Harvey ? Australian multi-instrumentalist and former Bad Seed ? is great on "The Colour of the Earth", a male voice bringing life to the testimony of a veteran.
Harvey, though, is having a good war. Death may be everywhere but fun is not out of the question. Let England Shake is well-named ? insistent rhythms push the songs along, making them anything but dreary. Harvey never quite cuts loose but she does rock out, revealing high-heeled black boots under her flowing skirts. And if her sense of control rarely wavers, the band suffer a false start on "The Devil", from which they recover flawlessly.
"The Words That Maketh Murder" is punctuated by sassy handclaps, and some very funny 60s-style backing vocals from the men. There is something impish, too, about playing a set of songs about war and death, then pulling a trigger-happy old song like "Big Exit" ("Gimme a pistol! Gimme the gun!") out from a hidden holster.
Commercially, Harvey's Mercury-winning album, Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea is probably regarded as her high point. Artistically, though, her last one, White Chalk, is the work by which she should be judged.
One of its finest songs, "Silence", closes the encore tonight. On it, a muted Harvey describes someone (a woman?) stealing to some secret place, longing for an encounter (with an unrequited lover?) that never happens. It is both specific, and vague, and painfully well-observed. "Silence!" she sings slowly, louder and louder, as the band ratchet up the volume. It was hard to imagine how much better Harvey could get after the ghostly authority of the White Chalk songs. But her feathered headgear tonight could easily double as laurels.
Sienna Guillory Tricia Vessey Aki Ross Ashley Tappin Carmen Electra
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