The Hope of P.J.Harvey.

P.J.Harvey, ICC Theatre, January 2017.


What PJ Harvey does now goes beyond mere rock'n'roll. Presenting records as wilfully 'difficult' as Let England Shake and the blunt reportage of The Hope Six Demolition Project live would be a fool's errand to any lesser artist.

But after negotiating the mysteries and metal detectors of the still-with-new-car-smell ICC, there was other challenging music as warm up. The latter element of Xylouris White is Jim White of Dirty Three. His sometimes skittering/sometimes booming drumming ricocheted off George Xylouris' Cretan lute. One moment it was a goat-herder by a meandering stream, then a Zorba dance on a tank. Impressive and puzzling.

More drums, this time through a hushed darkness, announced PJ Harvey's arrival as the ten-piece band marched on — a black-clad second line at a hipster's funeral. Chain Of Keys was an ominous welcome to the urban stories of The Hope Six Demolition Project, The Ministry Of Defence threatening, more disturbing as delivered by her so-plaintive voice. These songs have a life now not entirely present on the record. There were sudden stops, sudden blackness — like you had to blink and look away from what she saw.

A suite of Let England Shake songs was almost relief — as if The Words That Maketh Murder is a cheery jig and reel comparatively. The tour for that album presented its sometimes blood-drenched songs as austere sepia-toned memories. Here, with a backdrop of a brutalist concrete wall, it was even darker.

Harvey was drama on spindly legs. Throwing big shadowy shapes with a saxophone as prop, security blanket, weapon. She's a hieroglyph, a banshee, maybe even death. Then she sighed the foggy regret of When Under Ether, becoming a fragile girl making the hardest decision. There was no between-song patter — that contact might somehow break the spell.

Then back to The Hope Six Demolition Project for a troubled walk Near The Memorials To Vietnam And Lincoln, and the messed-up blues of The Ministry Of Social Affairs. The descent into madness of Down By The Water was a return to the familiar. Polly Jean Harvey dropped the mask(s) for a moment, to introduce a phenomenal band centred around long-time collaborators, John Parish and kinda-hometown-boy Mick Harvey. 

River Anacostia offered odd beauty, ebbing away on the ensemble's voices alone. Of course that's not all: her snarling take on Dylan's Highway 61 Revisited gave way to a final Is This Desire?. You filed out, exhausted from the emotions she had torn out of your chest.
Performance art.
Art as performance.
Extraordinary, again.