On the cover of Polly Jean Harvey’s new album, “To Bring You My Love” (Island), the singer is pictured lying in a red dress with eyes closed, lips slightly parted, black hair flowing, immersed to her ears in water. It is an image that suggests blissful repose, an ecstatic surrender, or death.
The singer, who records under the name PJ Harvey, is a master of creating such ambiguity in both her visual and musical language, and it’s what makes “To Bring You My Love” such a rich listening experience. Following the bristling popcraft of her stunning 1992 debut, “Dry,” the full-on fury of the 1993 “Rid of Me” and the raw sparseness of “4 Track Demos,” the new disc is a dramatic departure.
It’s less about structured songs than atmosphere and mood, with Harvey’s malleable voice creating a series of characters in highly theatrical style–a dramatic emphasis that carried over to the singer’s experimentation with wigs, makeup and costumes on her current tour and in publicity photos.
At 25, Harvey has established herself as one of the major artists of the decade because she refuses to stand pat. For “To Bring You My Love” she started over: a new band, new coproducers and a new way of songwriting.
As in the past, she began composing on guitar, but found a more inspiring way into the music by playing “a cheap old organ that I bought for 50 quid” at a store in her native Dorsett, England. It was a bold move setting aside her primary instrument for one she could barely play.
“It made the songs completely different, which is what I wanted,” Harvey says. “Guitar-written songs tend to be based on rhythm, whereas the keyboards give you a much more subtle, ambiant, sustained atmosphere.”
On her current tour, which brings her to the Vic Saturday, she doesn’t play guitar at all.
“I wanted to concentrate on singing,” she says. “I’ve been taking lessons the last two years, and found how much depends on how you hold your body, how you breathe. All that is very difficult to do with a heavy instrument strapped around your neck. You start sounding like a stubborn old cow.”
The varied vocals make “To Bring You My Love” Harvey’s most involving album. In its pure form, the singer’s voice is scythe-like in its emotional directness. But, along with coproducers Flood and John Parish, Harvey also twisted and distorted her voice to create murkier, more disturbing scenarios: the disembodied transmissions of “Working for the Man,” the whispered incantations of “Down By the Water.”
“Making the record was extremely traumatic, like an emotional assault course,” Harvey says. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life, let alone the most difficult record I’ve made.”
Harvey says the more open-ended nature of the lyrics also was intentional.
“I was feeling quite bored with always singing, `I, I, I’ and `me, me, me,’ ” she says. “I wanted to embrace things more universally. It’s a love album, which could mean many things: love of a god, love of a thing, love of another human being, love of oneself.”
Singer Courtney Love has stated that the album is entirely about Harvey’s relationship with her “Rid of Me” recording engineer, Chicagoan Steve Albini. Harvey denies it.
“I’d like to know how she came to that conclusion, though I admire her and hold no ill feelings toward her,” Harvey says. “I’d just like to say it’s not about Steve. It’s about him as much as it is about anyone who has had a role in my life.”
The harsh sound of “Rid of Me” divided fans who admired the more pop-leaning “Dry,” but Harvey says “Rid of Me” accomplished all that she desired.
“I was very interested in capturing the live energy of that band, and that’s why I approached Steve about recording it,” she says. “I was really pleased with the outcome–it’s a complete document of how my band sounded at that time.”
Some observers viewed the release of “4 Track Demos” later that year as a repudiation of “Rid of Me,” because it contained many of the same songs in stripped-down form.
“It had nothing to do with me being dissatisfied,” Harvey says. “There were other songs on there that I wanted heard, and I wanted people to hear my own production because I think it showed a different side to the songs.”
It also represented a clearing of the decks for Harvey, who dismissed her previous band and began conjuring the songs that would make up “To Bring You My Love.”
“When it came time to write, I went to my home in Dorsett,” Harvey says. “It’s out in the country, an inspiring place that conjures all these images in my head. The album became very filmic from the start, all because of the view I had from my window. There are no neighbors, just trees and hills and the sea.”
Harvey’s gift is the way she turns that familiar geography inward and makes it the terrain of the heart.
