PJ HarveyPJ Harvey plays the Blue Stage at 6.45pm at the Big Day Out at the Gold Coast Parklands on Sunday.
PJ Harvey was so exhausted at the end of a world tour for her sixth studio album Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea that she felt depressed, spiritually fatigued and creatively at a halt. “I had run myself into the ground,” explains Harvey, who has since been working on a new album. “You think I would have seen all the signs before but I still haven’t learned how to find the right balance when it comes to writing, recording and performing.”
Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea won her the prestigious Mercury Prize Award in London last year and received critical acclaim in music press around the world. It was described as her New York album even though Harvey only spent six months in the city writing some of the songs that contributed to the final work.
“I was quickly pigeonholed with that album. In fact I wrote half of it in England and it was completely recorded in the UK, but people will continue to be fascinated with a tiny speck of change in your life and for me, New York was just that – a fleeting moment.”
Harvey has been busy working on new material for a forthcoming album, but it’s too early to pin point the body of its direction. “I am a very hard judge of my own work, and even though I have written an enormous amount of songs I have just been very choosy about which ones I will include on the album,” says Harvey. The material does however deal with “taboo subject matter” and still retains Harvey’s signature blood-shedding ways.
“It was only once I had actually recuperated after about three months from being home from touring that I started to find my inspiration again,” says Harvey. “But when I first got off tour I was absolutely drained of everything and quite scared thinking I am never going to have an idea again. It happens to me every time and I just forget that is part of the process you have to go through to get to any good material.”
Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea sunk and swam through a plethora of emotions – it pointed to love, loss, longing and lust. The songs are drawn from Harvey’s experiences in various cities and also share her thoughts about life on the English coast of Dorset where she lives. The album was seen as a return to her howling angst but lyrics that remained honest and heartfelt. It is rock-based but there’s plenty of melodies too and is Harvey’s most mature and polished material yet. Who can go past the catchy vocal melodies in songs like We Float or the duet with Radiohead's Thom Yorke in This Mess We're In.
Harvey was delighted to have Thom Yorke appear on the album. “I remember when his band was supporting me in America,” laughs Harvey. “I wrote that song with him in mind and wouldn’t have done it if he had not agreed to it.” And of course Harvey must have got some joy out of having Yorke sing the line: ‘Night and day I dream of making love to you now baby’.
“He is a musical ally, if I need help or need someone to restore my faith in music then he is the one I get in touch with,” she says.
Harvey admits that singing about personal growth, love gone wrong; lust that fades and feelings that don’t change can stir more than an inner emotional storm. “If you get stuck thinking the same feelings or ponder on the same experiences over and over you find you end up going round in circles, even going mad,” says Harvey.
“I remember particularly around the time of Is This Desire? that I couldn’t sing the songs from the album. It was very awkward,” says Harvey. “Now that I have some distance from the songs I am okay about them. I don’t have that same feeling with this album though… but I tend to reject songs as soon as I have finished performing them so much. I just get to a point where I need to create something new, find something else to address and take a step in a new direction.”
It might have been Nick Cave that lured the black haired green-eyed princess into his dark world, but now it’s Josh Hommes from Queens of the Stone Age who wants to record music with Harvey. The band expressed interest in Harvey and hoped to record with her while they are both on tour in Australia for the Big Day Out. “I am a huge Queens fan,” says Harvey. “Who knows we may do something, maybe even for my album, but it’s too early to tell. I may just do this next record all on my own. It’s still very early days. But I have seen the band perform and I really like them.”
