PJ Harvey Live

Somerset House, London

Caroline Sullivan
Thursday July 15, 2004. The Guardian

"Speak to me of heroin and speed," PJ Harvey rasps witchily, minutes into her set. Well, good to see you, too, Polly. "Speak of the language and violence of blood," she demands, her voice pitched at the same frequency as the buzzy bass guitar. This tune, Whores' Hustle, is having a striking effect on some of the crowd packed into this riverside courtyard. One man wrings his hands urgently. Others look as if they want to hurl themselves at her pink-stilettoed feet.

An encounter with Harvey can be hypnotic, exhausting or intimidating, all in the course of one show. And if the earth moves for the audience, what must it be like for her, howling to the heavens under a gothically grim sky? She belongs to an elite division of singers, including former boyfriend Nick Cave, who get right inside a song at what seems considerable risk to their mental health, and she's doing it now.

Harvey is on the attack - making circuits of the stage, tumbling on to her miniature bottom as if shot from a cannon during Who the Fuck?, sometimes slumping into a kind of morphined stupor.

Some of this fem-angst showboating is obviously razzle-dazzle. Harvey has, after all, been been plying her brooding trade for 12 years, and when not actually singing she is every bit the pro, charmingly gushing her thanks.

Introducing her old collaborator, John Parish, who comes aboard for the lead-footed stomp known as Meet Ze Monsta, she even giggles. It almost appears that PJ Harvey is a role created by this tiny womanas an outlet for her more problematic feelings. But "PJ" makes a fantastic show of it, hellishly backlit in red and purple, nudged along by primal rhythms from two drummers.

The new album, Uh Huh Her, is visited throughout the set, and produces a memorable moment in the title track, which Harvey sings bent double, as if too spent to stand. But, inevitably, the old ones are the best. She vamps up Down by the Water, slinking like a jazz floozy, while Dress is a howler in every way. During Taut, she's nearly hysterical, sinking to her knees and screaming, "Take me!" Staged or not, Harvey is a one-off, going that little bit further than the rest.

· At Brixton Academy, London SW9, tonight. Box office: 020-7771 3000.

P J Harvey, Somerset House, London

By Fiona Sturges

Passionate, provocative and wilfully unpredictable - it's little wonder that P J Harvey strikes fear into her fans. In the dark days of the mid-Nineties, she cut a ghostly figure, so racked with anxiety that you worried for her sanity. Nowadays she's so full of confidence and joie de vivre that she has trouble keeping it in check. Only three songs in, during the typically confrontational "Who The Fuck?", a song about a disastrous visit to the hairdresser, the once bashful Polly dances with such abandon that she trips and falls flat on her backside.

Yes, it's a happier Polly before us, giggling and cavorting around the stage in a ludicrously sexy mini-skirt and black top and reducing grown men to mawkish puddles. Tonight, the cries of "We love you, Polly" are almost as fevered as the cries of "Turn it up" (the setting may be magnificent, but the acoustics here are terrible).

Much of the set revolves around this year's Uh Huh Her. Eschewing the glossy production of its Mercury prize-winning predecessor, Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea, the album echoes the pleasing bloody-mindedness of earlier records such as Rid of Me and To Bring You My Love.

Long-standing fans have complained that with Stories From The City, Harvey had become too slick, almost commercial-sounding, but tonight songs such as "Shame" and "Pocket Knife" take us back to the old Polly where blues collides violently with minimalist punk, where her vocals are a visceral moan, so full of rage that they leave the listener breathless and bruised. One might have expected a voice as intense as Harvey's to have mellowed over the course of a decade, but tonight her voice is rich and brutal, like Patti Smith at her feral best.

Older tracks, including "Meet Ze Monster", are performed with a similar rawness and intensity and one is reminded of the simplicity of the P J Harvey sound. For much of the time it's just voice and guitar; nothing else is needed.

Physically, too, Harvey is mesmerising. When she dances, her arms flail about and her head and her knees buckle as if crushed by the ferocity of her own words. When she's standing still, guitar in hand or shaking a pair of maracas, she brims with theatrical menace. Aside from the usual mumbled expressions of thanks, Harvey says very little, but her body language suggests a woman finally at ease with herself and those who so fiercely idolise her. Over a decade into her career, she is on unbeatably fine form. Singers of true talent and originality are hard to find these days. Polly, however, is one of a kind.

© 2004 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd