Dress

Must be a way that I can dress to please him

I have seen PJ Harvey live more than any other artist*. I first saw her on the 27th May 1992. I had yet to leave home to go to university. They were a three piece. I had the first album. The song they opened with was new to me. What that the drummer singing falsetto? Yes it was. However the song that mesmerized me was “Dress”. It is a song about being a teenager. Being insecure. Wanting to be desired. And being uncomfortable with your own desires. And the shame of failing in public. Obviously it is from the point of view of teenage girl. But it was a song that I deeply identified with. Oh and it rocks as hard AF.

The second time was the 2nd March 1995. By this time Harvey had swapped her austere black outfit and scrapped back hair for flowing locks and a glam red dress. She’d also swapped her brutally confessional song writing for southern gothic story telling a la Nick Cave. Along the way she had also picked up Cave sidesman Mick Harvey for a filled out sound with a bigger band. I didn’t find the redo wholly convincing. She looked like a child pretending to be an adult and I missed the raw intensity of the three piece.

The third was 13th December 1998. The Dirty Three were ton first. I remember Warren Ellis writhing around on the floor like a man being attacked by a homicidal violin. Harvey’s set up made her support act look like the London Symphony Orchestra. I don’t remember many people on the stage. Perfect for the spare, eerie music of the fourth album. I was in the seated section of the Shepherd’s Bush Empire. I got up and danced when it was “Dress”. I think the people sitting next to me were appalled.

The fourth was 30th September 2001. Harvey had hit the mainstream with the Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. It won the Mercury Music Prize that year. Needless to say I didn’t like it. It was a classic rock album and she put on a classic rock show at the Brixton Academy. Or rather it was Harvey performing the role of a classic rock singer. It bored the ass of me.

Less than 5 months after this gig, I left the UK. And I lost track of PJ Harvey. She stopped rocking entirely. She dressed up as a Victorian ghost that was partially haunting a piano.

The fifth was 19th January 2012. Over a decade later, Harvey had produced another Mercury Music Prize winning album. I thought it was very am dram. Harvey was in anorexic Queen Victoria widow mode. Or maybe I just dreamed that. The choice of venue was perfect though. The Sydney State Theatre is ornate, proudly performative, and theatrical, dalhing.

The sixth was 22nd January 2017. She had a new album. She had a big band. She was filling out a stadium. It was fine.

PJ Harvey has developed and changed as an artist over the last three decades. What runs all through her work is her interest in performance. She’s a theatre kid at heart, not a rock chick. She performs glam, she performs folk. The problem for me is that I really felt the performance on the first two albums. It felt real (even if she was faking it, that didn’t matter). It touched me. Albums three and four had enough discomforting performances in them to snag my ears and stick in my head.

Then I found her subsequent work increasingly unreal and distant. I could appreciate the craftswomanship but it did not connect. It left me dry**. A serious, middle brow art installation that can tour curated festivals for a couple of decades to polite applause.

But I still have Dress. And it still rocks.

*Except maybe The Wiggles. Until the restraining order.

**See what I did there.