I’m on a PJ Harvey nostalgia trip this weekend and I dug out a newspaper clipping from 2008 that I saved after seeing her live for the first time. It features a (stellar) review of her solo concert in Warsaw, as well as a short interview - no new information, really, but I thought I’d translate it and share it here for posterity (plus a faded photo from the gig).
PJ Harvey: I Didn’t Drown My DaughterROBERT SANKOWSKI: White Chalk has received many great reviews. But weren’t you afraid of the critics’ and fans’ reaction before releasing an album that showed such a drastic departure from your previous style?PJ HARVEY: I had mixed feelings. On one hand I was excited exactly because it’s such a different record. With this album I really wanted to leave behind everything I had been associated with earlier.
I was disappointed in myself and in what I’d done on the previous album
Uh Huh Her. I felt as if for the first time I didn’t have anything new to say. It’s probably my biggest fear - that I will end up repeating myself. That’s why
White Chalk was supposed to be the exact opposite of
Uh Huh Her. And I succeeded in that.
But at the same time it’s a very difficult and unusual record. Even when I play it for myself I feel a little bit confused.
It’s just human nature - we like to assign certain experiences to particular emotions, put them in order, to know what we associate them with, or what they evoke in us.
I’m still slightly unsure and perplexed by
White Chalk. It’s almost as if the album came from a different world. Whenever I make a record - and I think many artists do the same - I start with an idea of a direction I want to pursue. But then the music takes over and leads me towards something totally unexpected. You need to have the courage to let it carry you there. With
White Chalk I had that courage.
Is it true that you started learning the piano just a few months before recording this album?Yes. Someone had given me a piano so I started learning. I’m not a virtuoso, I’m not going to pretend that I can play or compose well on this instrument. But the contact with it turned out to be fruitful - because I hadn’t played it before, the piano opened a vast array of possibilities for me. I suddenly started singing and writing lyrics differently.
Many musicians composing on guitar claim that playing the piano completely changes the way they think about writing songs.I totally agree. I can’t believe it took me about 15 years to learn this.
Playing the piano has also taught me something else - that it’s worth reaching for instruments you can’t really play. It makes your almost childlike naivety come back. And naivety is such a valuable thing in music for me - just look at how many artists record their best work at the beginning of their careers, on the first or second album, when they still have a very naive approach to playing. It’s only later that certain habits kick in.
You seem to be a very calm and serene person. How much of the true PJ Harvey is there in the expressive, emotional, extraordinarily dressed character that we know from the stage or music videos?It’s all me! When I come out on stage, I never put on a mask. Which doesn’t mean I’m the same all the time. Like every person, I have different sides to my personality that I show in different situations. I’m very typical when it comes to that.
The thing that perhaps makes me different is the passion with which I sing. But it’s not exactly an expression of myself - more an expression of how I perceive reality and what I would like to convey to my listeners.
You strongly disagree with fans equating you with your lyrics and taking them too literally. For instance, “Down by the Water”...There used to be a few people who actually believed that - as I sing in this song - I really had a daughter and I drowned her in a river.
[laughter] It’s surprising, sometimes even scary. It makes me wonder.
There aren’t that many artists whose lyrics are taken that literally. For sure Nick Cave, maybe also Marianne Faithfull, and me. A particular type of musicians. Maybe it’s a question of how we look, maybe it’s a question of other people’s ideas of our lives. I don’t know. I can’t really understand it, especially since the music that moves me - for instance Neil Young, or Nina Simone - is important to me because I apply it to my own life, and not the lives of the people who wrote it.
You went to an art school and you’ve had your sculptures exhibited. Do you still sculpt?Yes. All my artistic activity is in a way interconnected. It doesn’t matter if I’m writing songs or sculpting - the goal is the same: to discover and express the same emotions. And to keep my hands busy somehow.
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/nLmigYB.jpg)
source: Gazeta Wyborcza, 23 May 2008