Blood On The Tracks

“My work really feels an ongoing journey,” declares Polly Jean Harvey in her dulcet Dorset accent. “I’ll still be feeling like I haven’t begun on my deathbed probably.”

Dressed entirely in black, sipping mineral water, and comfortably slouched on a low leather couch in the library of a London boutique hotel, the petite 41-year-old is far more gorgeous in the flesh than I’d anticipated from her bewitching but slightly intimidating press shots. It’s easy to see why a certain Mr. Nicholas Cave fell head over snakeskin boots in love with her back in the mid-Nineties. Not that it’d be particularly advisable to ask the notoriously private singer about her romantic life, past or present. Friendly and all as she is, she radiates professional reticence.
The hotel is The Gore, which is an appropriate name for a venue in which to discuss Harvey’s eighth studio album, the war-themed Let England Shake. Gallons of lyrical blood and guts are spilled over its 12 tracks. These new songs are all meditations on nationalism, violence and patriotism, and are littered with violent images of soldiers falling like lumps of raw meat on distant battlefields (both modern and historic). On the album’s epic centrepiece ‘All And Everyone’, she sings, “Death hung in the smoke and clung/ To 400 acres of useless beachfront/ A bank of red earth, dripping down death.”
Despite its stark and violent imagery, the album’s not really an anguished call for more peace and love. Rather it’s a series of sonic snapshots of the violent world we’re living in - and sadly have always lived in. “I did want to try and remain impartial in some ways,” she explains. “I wanted to have a platform to narratively convey these pieces of work, these songs, these words, but remain impartial. And that then meant that it was a series of images, of laying forth the scene, this is the scene, documenting that. And then the reader can draw information for themselves from it.
“In my mind, one of the ways in which the project began was I was very interested in the officially appointed artists to war – whether that was painters or poets. And I wondered how I might do the official reporting were I appointed the songwriter (laughs). That was really where my mind began with this. To try and bring back an impartial story from the frontline, and just present some facts.”
It’s been almost four years since her last album. Harvey is renowned as a highly prolific songwriter, reportedly discarding far more songs than she ever actually records. Did she set out to write a war-themed record or just eventually settle upon that theme from an array of available material?
“Every day I work on words so the process towards getting to this record was a long one. Over many years. It was very gradual during that time of writing that it became more and more clear to me that this was what I was interested in exploring right now. I wanted to try and find words to put to the world that we’re living in now, but I wanted to do that in a way that was also referencing part of the past. And it was just a process of searching, trial and error, really, to find the language to do that with. And I had to make a lot of mistakes along the way. There were many, many words written, of which only twelve made it through to the record.”
Do you have any friends or family in the military?
“I do, yes,” she affirms. “And through past generations of my family as well. I think it’s something many, many people have. I also know people outside of my family as well, that have been in the military.”
There’s some pretty graphic imagery in the lyrics. Did you talk to any of them about their battlefield experiences as part of your research?
“I tried to engage them in as much conversation as I could because I needed to gather a lot of information for this record. Everything from wading through history books to just trying to speak to as many people as I could to find out firsthand information. As well as reading firsthand accounts from contemporary life and war, not just historical. All manner of different ways. Poetry that’s been written over the years. Documentaries and films that other people have made. And songs, of course, other people’s songs.”
As with all PJ Harvey albums, Let England Shake sounds absolutely nothing like any of its predecessors. Ever since her electrically raw and angry 1992 debut Dry, she has chopped, changed and continuously surprised with a series of stunningly eclectic changes in musical direction. Her last solo album, 2007’s introspective White Chalk, was mostly comprised of gothic-sounding piano balladry. Shake is a much noisier and far less personal kind of artistic statement
However, while her sound may consistently change, the players and producers have mostly remained the same in recent years. Flood, Mick Harvey, John Parish and percussionist Jean Marc Butty all played important roles in the creation of the new album.
“We have a similar language musically, which makes it very easy for me to articulate to them what I’m looking for and what I’m asking of them, coupled with a friendship,” she explains. “So it makes for a really good environment in which to go about recording songs, which can be such a frightening and vulnerable area to be in when you’re trying to create... that I find it really beneficial to be with people that I know, and know musically that they can help me find what I’m looking for.”
Can a difficult personal relationship in studio sometimes benefit the music though?
“It can in a different way,” she nods. “And I do vary the musicians that I use according to the material, according to the songs, so that’s always the starting point. When I’d written these songs it didn’t take me long to realise what players I wanted to be there. I knew I wanted John’s judgement because he’s probably my hardest critic and he has a great perspective and judgement. He can really be very objective about things which is really useful when you’re becoming so entwined in a piece that you can’t see what it is that you’ve got.
“And Mick is a very soulful player. Very unique. I’ve never found anybody that has that kind of soul. He’s very sensitive in that way and sounds unlike anybody else – and I wanted that quality.
“And Jean-Marc is a very fluid drummer. Very human, very malleable. When I’d written these songs, I knew I wanted a certain fluidity and movement in the music. I wanted it to be confusing in the sense that it wouldn’t be pinned down very well, it would be quite indefinable. And I knew that his drumming would be very good for that.”
She originally considered recording in Berlin, but couldn’t find a studio that felt right. While she was still looking, an old church in her native Dorset became available. Is God a part of her life?
“That wasn’t the reason I recorded in the church,” she says, smiling. “I try and keep an open mind about everything. At this point in my life, age 41, I am not incorporating God into it. I try and remain open. And I also do not disrespect anybody that feels differently to that. So I don’t know where life will take me but, right now, no.”
Have you mellowed over the years?
“I feel quite the opposite, really. I certainly don’t feel that I’ve mellowed. I feel more impassioned and enraged by things that I see going on around me than I ever could have put words to 20 years ago.”
But those early albums were arguably even more angry and impassioned than this one.
She wrinkles her nose: “In a different way.”
Was that you singing from a personal viewpoint or just a fictional character you were playing on those early records?
“I always just try and follow the instinct of where the writing’s taking me. It was honest to that moment – and that moment was when I was first becoming aware of myself in the world. I was 18, 19, 20 years old. And that’s a different kind of communicating. A different kind of wrestling with trying to find the language to articulate one’s place in the world, to what I am doing now. I mean now I’m 41. One’s whole perspective changes as you get older.
“I’m no less passionate, no less enraged, but... seeing all the grey areas in between the black and white, when you’re young everything’s so simple in that it’s black or it’s white, it’s wrong or it’s right. As you get older, there are so many myriads of shades of grey that open up in between. And then it feels more like my duty to take those into account as well, but definitely I feel as passionately as I’ve ever done.”
Although she’s had a long, varied and successful career (winning such accolades as the 2001 Mercury Prize, amongst countless BRIT, Grammy and other nominations), she pinpoints performing the new album’s title track in front of Gordon Brown on The Andrew Marr Show in April of last year as one of her biggest highlights
“It’s so hard to pin it down to one or two moments because obviously there’s been so many really memorable times. I’d have to add playing to Gordon Brown being one of those. I think of late that really was something special for me, to be on that show at that particular point in time because it was a week before the elections and England was aflame with the elections. So to have that opportunity on that show was a real highlight for me.
“But really I think just my ongoing work is the thing that I look to most in terms of feeling like I’ve achieved something. I just want to hopefully keep improving as a writer and feel like I’m contributing something meaningful, something worthwhile. And if I get to the end of a particular project and feel that I’ve done that, then that’s the best feeling.”

Let England Shake is released February 11. See hotpress.com for archive interviews.