A Man A Woman Walked By

Although it’s been some 13 odd years since Polly Jean Harvey and John Parish released their first
collaborative outing Dance Hall At Louse Point, the latter has remained a mainstay of PJ’s live and studio ensembles. So, A Man A Woman Walked By is more of a continuation than a departure, although it does frequently leave the well-trodden path to explore some briary byroads, walking a tense, taut wire between melody and skronk, definite articles and abstract impressionisms.
The opening ‘Black Hearted Love’ finds PJ stitching bits of folk phraseology into a surprisingly accessible alt-rock backing not a million miles from Sparklehorse. But middlebrows shouldn’t get too comfortable: ‘Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen’ is a woodlands yowl that sounds like it was cooked up from a Joe Hill yarn about a Carter Family cellar shut-in, while ‘Leaving California’ and ‘The Soldier’ flashback to the Bronte ghost songs of White Chalk, both hinged around string figures and haunted omnichords shrouded with spider’s webs. Mind you, it’s not strictly an ethereal thang. ‘The Chair’ is almost archly dramatic, another tale of rivery infanticide underpinned by fractal jazz spasms, while ‘April’ adopts an octogenarian crone’s voice. As always, Harvey mines the hedgerow and haggart for metaphors of fucking, fighting and fertility: ‘Pig Will Not’ is a No Wave/rural blues as harsh as a night at the abattoir, while the excellently titled ‘A Woman A Man Walked By/The Crow Knows Where All The Little Children Go’ is the most explicitly Beefheart-like (and foul-mouthed) thing she’s ever recorded, its detuned guitar chained to a flyblown bone-machine rhythm.
Queasy listening. If nothing else, A Man A Woman Walked By, in all its violent originality, will sort out fairweather Pollywatchers from the swallow-alls.

Key Track: ‘The Soldier’