Dozens of characters live and yearn inPJ Harveys songs.
Ive really enjoyed presenting this show and the storyline, the narrative that it takes you on.
And Ive enjoyed embodying the story through my body and my bodily movements.
As she interpreted the rest of the songs, the presentation grew and grew.
She says she finds the newer material the most transformative.
I do feel very childlike and playful in some of the songs on the new album, she says.
Either way, Harvey says shes having a blast onstage for the first time in a long time.
Youve said this is the most youve enjoyed doing a tour.
Why is that?Its just a whole mixture of things, really.
The more albums Ive made, the more material there is to choose from.
The balance of the band and crew members has really worked well; everyone gets along very well.
And the audiences have been amazing.
Its hard to know, isnt it?
I find that really tremendously rewarding.
Its definitely not black and white, but all the gray in between.
Whats my body language as I am singing these words to people?
Then Ian helps me craft that through rehearsals.
Do you see each song as a distinctive character?
Is 50ft Queenie different from Angelene and Ira-Abel in Prayer at the Gate?Definitely.
And its purely dependent on that night in that room with those people.
So the words take on different meanings.
I do the presentation differently.
And it has to be done authentically, or it doesnt work.
I wouldnt explore them now because Im a different person.
I know those things now, so I dont need to explore them again.
And some things that just dont sort of fit anymore I wouldnt feel comfortable singing.
50ft Queenie was your breakthrough single in the States.
Whats the story behind that song?Gosh, its so long ago that I wrote it.
I cant remember how it started.
It might have even been a film title.
Was there a movie calledAttack of the 50 Ft. Womanor something like that?
I probably saw something quite funny in that and had a riff and put it together with a song.
A lot of those songs were actually quite playful.
You recorded the album thats on,Rid of Me, withSteve Albini, who recently passed.
He definitely helped my self-confidence in his own belief in my music and in myself as an artist.
I looked up to him so much.
Id admired his work for many years.
I think the biggest thing that he did for me was my confidence in myself and in my music.
He boosted me to believe in myself.
Do you remember anything that he said to help you believe in yourself?Not the specific words.
He only ever said that he was just bringing out what was already there.
But there were also all sorts of things to do with life as well.
He would honestly tell you what he thought in very simple terms, not tread carefully.
I admire that in people.
I want people to speak honestly and truthfully and not withhold things for fear of upsetting me.
And he definitely was that sort of person.
Thats never changed for me.
I met him when I was about 16, and then I joined his band [Automatic Dlamini].
And Johns 10 years older than me, so he was 26.
He became like an older brother, a sort of father figure, a teacher, a mentor.
He taught me how to play guitar.
He taught me how tobeonstage.
And hes taught me so many things about being a human being.
I have so much love and respect for that man.
Hes been by my side all these years and hes by my side onstage now.
I cant ever imagine not wanting him right by my side with every idea that I have.
Even now, Im starting down the road of my next project, and hes very involved in it.
I talk to him about it all the time.
Hes my musical partner in life, and I feel so grateful that Ive walked this planet with him.
Is he straight-talking?Absolutely [laughs].
Johns had me in tears many times, very straight-talking.
He pulls me up when I need pulling up.
He is also very straight with me on my creative work.
He lets me know if its weak.
He lets me know if he thinks its great.
He always tells me what he feels, and hes nearly always right, annoyingly [laughs].
Youve said that you dont seeI Inside the Old Year Dyingas a companion piece to your novel-in-verse,Orlam.
A poem is often very dense.
It has to work within the words on the page.
So I ended up with very dense lyrics to the songs.
I learned a lot from it.
Its made me think that for the next project, Id probably keep songs quite separate to poems.
But Im glad that I did it for this piece.
I was a younger poet.
My words werent as complicated or as dense as they became inOrlam.
And obviouslyOrlamswritten in the Dorset dialect, which added another layer of density.
It added another level again.
But yeah, also I just love language.
I love seeing how a language changes in dialects.
I noticed that an anagram forOrlamis moral.
Is there a moral toOrlam?Yeah.
All of the names in the book have two or three meanings.
It was just full of things.
[Orlam is the name of the books oracle, the eviscerated eye of a lamb.]
I think ofOrlamlike a fantastic fairy tale, in a way.
And most fairy tales do have a moral.
And theres a lot of change in between.Yeah.
I choose what I want to get lost in for years at a time quite carefully now.
What have you been reading lately?Well, Ive been very submerged inFour Quartetsby T.S.
Its not the first time Ive read it; Im probably reading it for the 30th time.
Im very deeply into Rainer Maria Rilke, particularlyDuino Elegies, at the moment.
Im reading a lot of Seamus Heaney; I go back to Seamus work all the time.
Hes such a master of storytelling and of rhyme and chime.
Im also reading the Book of Job.
I dip into a lot of different things.
I learn from it.
A lot of what I read is things that Don has said, You should read that.
And then, we often reflect on the work.
So weve been reading a lot of Rilke together lately.
You recently said that if you wrote a memoir, it would be a fictional autobiography.
