Review: PJ Harvey conjures a lovely but inscrutable spell in her first Philly show in seven years at the Met
The British songwriter and guitarist played her new album in its entirety, and reached back into her catalog to satisfy old-time fans as well.
PJ Harvey’s show at the Met Philly on Friday was ruthlessly efficient and ultimately satisfying. It was a taut, terrific, 1-hour, 45-minute performance full of mystery and drama that met the needs of both artist and audience.
It was Harvey’s first time in Philadelphia in seven years. The British songwriter, vocalist and multi-instrumentalist was last in town at the Fillmore in 2017 behind The Hope Six Demolition Project, an album whose global geopolitical aspirations drew on research conducted in Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Washington.
This time, Harvey and her fabulous five-piece band — which included longtime collaborator John Parish on guitar — came to Philly with music focused far closer to Harvey’s home in Dorset in the west of England.
Her 2023 album I Inside the Old Year Dying is a folky, spooky adaptation of Harvey’s 2022 epic poem Orlam, a coming-of-age fable in a frightful, magical setting perhaps inspired by her childhood growing up on a sheep farm in the region.
The songs on I Inside are bewitching, often quite beautiful, and also enigmatic as they put ancient Dorset dialect to use in songs that make reference to Shakespeare and Elvis Presley.
The latter turns up in “Lwonesome Tonight,” as Harvey asks “Are you Elvis? Are you God? Jesus sent to win my trust?” Also, “A Child’s Question, August” repeatedly references “Love Me Tender.”
Many among the generations of fans who filled the Met — some old enough to remember her first Philly performance at the Chestnut Cabaret for her debut album, Dry, in 1992 — did not seem to be familiar with Harvey’s new material. But rather than sprinkle the new songs into her set, Harvey started the show by playing the new album in its entirety, right from the get-go.
And since there was no opening act — and this was only the second night of a U.S. tour that began earlier in the week in Washington — that meant that much of the crowd was still filing in only to find that Harvey was already on stage at 8 p.m., conjuring a lovely but inscrutable spell.
Good for Harvey, 54, on that front. Three decades ago, she released a trio of masterly albums — Dry, followed by 1993′s Rid of Me (produced by Steve Albini, who died last year. He “changed the course of my life,” Harvey said then), and 1995′s To Bring You My Love.
Harvey could easily be in the anniversary tour business at this point, celebrating the pulverizing power of her astonishing early work. Instead, she’s pushing forward as an artist and inviting her people in to a mystical, strangely beautiful world.
On Friday night, she moved about the stage dressed in a Todd Lynn-designed cape imprinted with the images of leafless trees, her expressive voice in gloriously good form.
She spoke not a word of stage patter, not even a “How ya doin’, Philly?” Each song in the quickly paced show was greeted with polite applause, as the crowd wondered if they were ever going to get the songs they came to hear.
Never fear. Harvey exited the stage after the album-closing “A Noiseless Noise,” leaving the band — Parish, drummer Jean-Marc Butty, multi-instrumentalist Giovanni Ferrario, and bass player James Johnston — to step forward and sing the jaunty “The Colour of the Earth,” from 2011′s Let England Shake.
Then, she was immediately back for a second set, the intermission lasting approximately 15 seconds. And from there, the show dug in to Harvey’s illustrious back catalog, beginning with two antiwar songs also from Let England Shake.
On the martial, ironic “This Glorious Land,” she plugged in and played electric guitar, and on “The Words That Maketh Murder,” she switched to Autoharp as the band chimed in backup vocals borrowed from Eddie Cochrane’s “Summertime Blues”: “I’m gonna take my problem to the United Nations.”
Early on in the second set, a sound problem required a roadie named Buddy to come on stage to work on Harvey’s guitar amp before “Angelene,” a song sung from a sex worker’s perspective from 1998′s Is This Desire? that observes “Dear God, life ain’t kind / People getting born and dying.”
The glitch slowed the quickly paced show down, and led to an inspired burst of Philly fandom. While the roadie was on stage, chants of “Bud-dy! Bud-dy!” broke out, echoing the 40,000 who called out Phillies infielder and Millville, N.J., native Buddy Kennedy’s name at Citizens Bank Park earlier in the week. Genius!
But I digress. Much of what makes Harvey uniquely compelling on stage is derived from her sense of reserve. She’s a disciplined performer who’s never indulgent, adept at bringing her songs to abrupt, dramatic conclusions, and leaving the audience wanting more.
That was true on Friday as she moved from strength to strength toward the end of the show, as she reached back to Dry for the fiercely feminist “Dress,” to the epic, biblical “To Bring You My Love,” on which she bellowed with primordial force.
But she was equally powerful on “Man-Size Sextet” as she rode a rugged-yet-restrained guitar riff, sounding superpowered and understated all at once.
“No need to shout?” she asked. “Can you hear, can you hear me now?”
Indeed we could.