Theater of the Clouds, Portland
October 7, 2024
"Arms and legs were in the trees," sang Polly Jean Harvey during "The Words That Maketh Murder," her head tilted upward for dramatic emphasis. This subtle physical movement lent a harrowing narrative even more power; for this artist, music isn't just something to be played, it's something to be experienced and felt profoundly.
On those counts, Harvey succeeded magnificently in Portland. What transpired at Theater of the Clouds resists description. Poetry set to music? Chamber death-pop? A magic realism song suite? "Alternative icon takes it to next level?" The old saying "writing about music is like dancing about architecture" seems targeted to nights like this. Harvey's a sophisticated songwriter, but even here, feelings and movement prevailed over words. She danced, floated about the stage, and frequently stopped by each bandmember, absorbing the sound. At one point, Harvey traced a huge circle with her hand from the ground to the air above her head. "Walk through this portal with me," she seemed to be saying to the audience.
Poetry, the folk tradition and a contemplated, mature vision define Harvey's current tour in support of her 2023 album I Inside the Old Year Dying. Gradually unfolding amid mood-setting stage lights, this was a journey haunted by mortality, emotional longing, and fleeting seasons. The show was audacious, but that should come as no surprise: Harvey, a generational/Gen X comet, has always been heroic. Her lo-fi, early LPs found her asserting her identity with whisper-to-a-scream dynamics, which gave way to the shimmering, narcotic savagery of To Bring You My Love (1995) and other critically hailed works such as Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (2000), Uh Huh Her (2004), and Let England Shake (2011).
I Inside the Old Year Dying, the Dorset, England musician's 10th album and first effort in seven years, was a creation reportedly spurred by heavy self-reflection. In her fifth decade, the stakes likely feel higher to Harvey, and this knotty, 12-track escapade of atmosphere, reality-bending, and fire-glow storytelling is the second-most graphic advertisement of where she finds herself artistically now. In first place? This spellbinding show, a fine case study of music-as-performance-art that runs through the entire (!) new album in order, then saves the more familiar, crowd-pleasing works for the back half of the night.
Playing your entire new album to start your show is a gambit very few touring artists would attempt, but Harvey is one of the daring few that can pull it off. From the droning "Prayer at the Gate" to the percolating and spectral "The Nether-edge" to the martial drum-inflected, abrasive "A Noiseless Noise" ("Absence/Cold moon comes down curdling... know you every tear in these woods"), a transformative odyssey had occurred for all assembled. On the sound system, the tolling of church bells and birds chirping between songs lent continuity and a sense of place. Some music undeniably benefits from being played live, and this latest Harvey album, an opaque yet rewarding ride, definitely found its strongest context onstage.
For all her poetic/artistic impulses and achievements, Harvey understands showmanship and the potency of her work outside of this latest album. After a backing band-only performance of "The Colour of Earth" that acted as a dividing line between the show's two acts, Harvey reemerged in a plain white dress, as if cleansed, and got down to other business. Rid of Me's "50ft Queenie," with its careening chaos, stood in slightly awkward contrast to the calmer, elegant Dying material (it was actually a nice palate-cleanser). "The Desperate Kingdom of Love" found Harvey on an acoustic, in one of the evening's more intimate moments. She appears so possessed and otherworldly at times, a selection like that zooms in on, and humanizes her.
As with Harvey's repertoire overall, such quietude gives way to a tempest, so it was fitting that the penultimate song of the night was the feral, jagged "To Bring You My Love," radiating high voltage courtesy of Parish's guitar. When Harvey snarled, "I've traveled over dry earth and floods/Hell and high water to bring you my love," you believed her, and on a different level, also felt appreciation for all the intense work she's put into being the artist she is. Is Harvey suffering too much for her art? Worry not — she actually offered some personal reassurance during the encore, "Horses in My Dreams":
"Rode a horse round the world
Along the tracks of a train
Broke the record, found the gold
Set myself free again...
I have pulled myself clear..."
Photo credit: Steve Gullick
