Pretty Polly

The many faces of PJ Harvey

by Gary Susman

What to do if you're a pop songstress who's been out of the public eye and off the radio for a while? As popular affection has shifted in recent years from Hole-style riot grrrls to Lilith-style quiet grrrls, the current batch of re-emerging rock chanteuses want to show that each of them has spent her down time productively, on some soul-changing and, more important, sound-changing personal quest. Courtney Love has discovered her inner Stevie Nicks, Liz Phair has found motherhood, Madonna has found several new religions whose practitioners she can offend.

And Polly Jean Harvey? She's been trying on new identities the way Whitney Houston changes costumes, about once every couple of songs. Her first incarnation, fronting the trio PJ Harvey on 1992's Dry (Island), found her playing the roles of both druid goddess and blooze-metal mama, one so overwrought she could send Robert Plant off in a whimper. Since then, she's gone acoustic, gone cabaret, gone solo, gone every which way. The only constant has been the startling, striking, exciting power of her songwriting and her chameleon voice.

In the time since her last album, 1995's much-acclaimed To Bring You My Love (Island), Harvey's done a lot of exploring, writing a libretto for John Parish's Dance Hall at Louse Point, guesting on albums by artists as diverse as Nick Cave and Tricky, and making her acting debut as Mary Magdalene in an upcoming Hal Hartley movie. Now the fruits of her sabbatical are available on Is This Desire? (Island), an album credited to PJ Harvey but recorded almost by Polly Jean the solo artist with some session help (including Rob Ellis from the original PJ Harvey trio). And what has she discovered? Well, um, she's dipped her toe into trip-hop, and her new theatrical bent is apparent, but otherwise the album is marked by a variety of styles and approaches similar to those of her previous releases.

The disc is bookended by mournful, folky ballads backed up against urgent, all-out rockers. In between are more haunting acoustic ballads, electronic dirges, and minor-key mid-tempo pop melodies arching across trancelike shuffling percussion soundscapes. Ominous digital hums and whirs rumble below while arpeggios from distant pianos chime in the upper register. The production, by Harvey and electronica mavens Flood and Head, envelops the songs' diverse textures in a uniform fog of irresistible gloom.

In fact, as bleak as the album often is -- nothing new for Harvey, who has never shied away from the bitter or the frightening -- and as inaccessible as the songs' forbidding surfaces may seem during early listenings, the music does have a singular and devastating impact. After all, Harvey is nothing if not a compelling storyteller. Even when her lyrics are vague or metaphorical, her intent is always clear.

Desire? is populated by a series of women each of whom Harvey fully inhabits in a discrete three-minute sketch. Thanks to her prodigious vocal technique (augmented on some tracks by overdrive distortion), she seems to be singing in a different voice on each song -- whispering seductively, muttering in resignation, moaning with earnest and depthless sorrow, or shrieking in otherworldly fear or delight. Many of the women have apt or deliberately ironic names: the promiscuous, literally God-forsaken Angelene ("Prettiest mess you've ever seen," she wryly describes herself); Catherine, who is both a martyr and a torturer; and Joy, a woman for whom there is "no hope." Yet all are women with reserves of power that may surprise even themselves, whether spitting out curses like "Till the light shine on me, I damn to hell every second you breathe" (on "Catherine") or howling out sexual dares like "How much more can you take from me?" (on "No Girl So Sweet").

Is This Desire? is a misnomer, since these dozen hard gems prove that Harvey can recognize desire. The title track actually poses a better question: "Is this desire enough to lift us higher?" For Polly Jean Harvey, at least, the answer seems to be yes.