Live Report: PJ Harvey creates an incredible sonic netherworld at the Olympia Theatre, Dublin

Seven years have ticked by, since PJ Harvey’s last album, the outstanding The Hope Six Demolition Project, a record that catalogued her travels to Afghanistan, Kosovo and Washington DC. That album was recorded as part of an art installation which had Harvey, her band and co-producers, recording in a custom-made glass box at Somerset House in London, as punters looked on. There was some talk after that album of PJ considering calling it a day and letting that be that.

Thankfully, that did not happen. Instead, we have another album from this most singular of artists – I Inside the Old Year Dying - and tonight the audience in Dublin’s Olympia are the first to hear its airing. That’s incredibly exciting, and every soul inside the venue appears to appreciate their good fortune - an exuberant energy sparks through the venue.

If Hope Six was public art, I Inside is cloistered, reclusive, esoteric. Its dozen songs are adapted from Harvey’s novel-in-verse Orlam, released last year. Written in ancient Dorset vernacular, arcane and sweet to the ear, it maps a year in the life of nine-year-old Ira-Abel Rawles, her loss of innocence and her passage from girlhood to adolescence. Similar to PJ, Ira grows up in the West Country, but a magical realist mutation of it, populated by sinister types, alive and otherworldly.

The set tonight consists of two Acts, the first being the new album in its entirety, followed by a tremendous interlude and then the second act consisting of some of Harvey’s greatest songs including ‘Angelene’, ‘Send His Love To Me’, ‘The Desperate Kingdom of Love’, ‘Man-Size’, ‘Dress’ – none of which have been played in almost a decade, indeed ‘Man-Size’ had not been played live since 2008! Oh man, this gig was over delivery on a grand scale. Rampant PJ fans were in rapture.

I ain’t going to lie, stuff got peculiar, much of I Inside is inscrutable, indeed much of its alluring beauty is its baffling nature. It’s not easy to absorb, the best bet is to simply immerse yourself in the spectacle.

It is to Christ-like figure, Wyman-Elvis, whom Harvey pleads to on opening song ‘Prayer at the Gate’ – “Wyman, am I worthy/Speak your wordle to me.” PJ, in white linen dress with Victorian styled laced heeled ankle boots dances avant garde style, emulating Greco-Romano poses, shifting across a stage littered with antique chairs, a workman’s bench, a writing pew and vintage amps. Her collaborators – John Parish, Jean-Marc Butty, James Johnston and Giovanni Ferrario – fan around her playing synths, drums, keyboards and guitars in a mix of electronica and folk. Synths and keyboards are mounted on antique tables, spotlights illuminate scenes against a huge backdrop of peeling masonry, between songs the actors stand motionless, it is more theatrical play than mere gig.

Field recordings of birdsong and forest dwellers blend with the heave of the school-yard and furrowed industrial places. The ghastly pull of the latter is succinctly mapped on ‘Autum Term’ and the beginning of school - “I ascend three steps to hell/The school bus heaves up the hill” – ouch.

Wyman-Elvis’ language is garbled, a mix of ‘Love Me Tender’ and the Gospel of John. I warned you stuff was going to get weird, best advice is not to think too much, rather dive in, let it flow over you. Even when things appear straightforward such as on ‘Lwonsome Tonight’ – “In her satchel, Pepsi fizz, peanut-and-bananas sandwiches”, they ain’t – “For this man her shepherd is parts her bready, her bready-lips.”

The haze of instruments on ‘Seem an I’ is a Barrettonian barrage and apes his wonderful wordplay - “Her fingernails a-ripped from hauling clay-filled fists out of the river’s edges for pots with happy voices – Harvey’s voice valiant, the drums game, the rest a feverish drowning, a juxtaposition of the pastoral “of chilver hogs and fleecy’ and the ominous but inevitable “Of mother’s voice not calling/Of corrugated iron”. The Dorset of ‘The Nether-edge’ is alluring- “Femboys in the forest find figs of foul freedom” but terrifying - “a not-girl zweal-ed at the stake”.

It is recalled that PJ always dug Howlin’ Wolf – and like that incredible bluesman she sits and stoops and kneels and genuflects, centred as the hurricane of music rolls around her, purging the atavistic darkness, teasing the alluring pagan primitivism. But you know with Harvey, there always has been and still are gallows gags to lighten the mood. And the depictions of nature are spell-binding, such as on ‘A Child’s Question, August’ – “Starling swarms will soon be lorn. Rooks tell stories ‘cross the corn. Swifts abandon autumn’s ache.”

The verve to do this, but her audience have always followed her, no matter the weird terrain. And once again this is unlike any other PJ Harvey record. Part Nick Drake. Part Ummagumma. Part Captain Beefheart. Part Led Zep. Part Kraftwerk. Wholly something else.

PJ leaves the stage. There is an interlude with the band front of stage, clutching guitars, marching snare and tambourine, clapping and singing sea shanty style ‘The Colour of this Earth’, the final song from Harvey’s Mercury award winning Let England Shake.

PJ returns, shedding a bewildering array of personae - primal blues, carnal cabaret, confessional folkie, garage rocker. Kicking off with ‘The Glorious Land’, its calvary bugle chases drums, synths and maracas who are gone tearing down the track. It is followed by ‘The Worlds That Maketh Murder’ - Screaming Jay Hawkins merging into Eddie Cochran. Then the garage rocking of ‘Angelene’. For ‘Send His Love to Me’, PJ stands front of stage, her giant shadow dominating, swallowing her band. ‘The Desperate Kingdom of Love’ features just Harvey spotlighted with lightly strummed guitar flowing into the blues howl of ‘Man-size’ and the burlesque cabaret of ‘Down by the Water’ and then the biblical deluge by way of proto-industrialists Suicide ‘To Bring You My Love’, with call and response delivered Link Wray style.

The standing ovation is immense and lasts until PJ re-emerges for ‘C’mon Billy’ and the choral delivery of ‘White Chalk’. She thanks us and hopes that we come again, sure thing, how about tomorrow?