The Stool Pigeon

Tonight is a sophisticated all-seated affair held at one of Berlin’s plushest venues, more used to elaborate theatrical performances than howling rock’n’roll. But then this evening no rock’n’roll is witnessed. Instead Dracula’s most celebrated daughter treats us to a solo performance of subtlety and restraint.

Once hailed as the new Patti Smith, and always the shape-shifting actress, tonight PJ takes on the role of a bashful Victorian puritan, complete with archaic dress and windblown raven hair. It’s almost as if she feels that alone, minus any musical back-up, she needs to win tonight’s audience over with a show of feminine vulnerability. She giggles. She apologies. She even laughs at herself and her pre-Commodore 64 drum machine.

It’s apparent that for all her admirable flair and determination, Polly Harvey is a nagging contradiction. This is a woman who sings starkly about heartache, death and trauma, and yet with a new carefully contrived haircut to suit the mood of every album, you somehow can’t invest too much belief in any of it. Where does the biography end and the performance begin? With stars such as Bowie and Madonna, artifice is accepted, but PJ clearly strives for a higher level of authenticity. To add to the confusion, much of her allure lies in enigma. Whenever her music or lyrics get too literal or slightly less vague, the spell is broken in a jolting instant. When she bellows, “He told me straight, ‘You gotta leave, it’s getting late’ / Too many cops, too many guns, all trying to do something no one else has done,” during ‘Big Exit’, it sounds about as harrowing as a well-to-do Prada-clad English woman surveying Union Square from her hotel room. It also sees her crediting guns, which most sane people view as non-living objects, with too much artistic ambition.

Played acoustically, without the ‘avant-garde’ production techniques that killed albums such as Is This Desire?, all of PJ’s songs sound remarkably similar. Furthermore, it’s obvious that her strength lies in striking imagery and theatrical yearning, rather than stirring or memorable melodies.

On a performance level for a seasoned ‘artiste’, she seems remarkably awkward. During too much of the night, she sits playing guitar with her legs unnaturally wide open as if she’s about to give birth. A trivial complaint, perhaps, but this is PJ Harvey - a self-proclaimed take-no-prisoners-man-eating legend in her own lifetime.

During the finale, she treats us to wild-woman-of-the-Dorset-forest classic ‘C’mon Billy’. Played sparsely on a diminutive Spanish guitar, it is effortlessly wonderful. For this evening at least, though, it’s too little too late. Come on Polly, give us some true grit.

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