Where do we start? | (Re)discover PJ Harvey

PJ Harvey has revolutionized female rock and continues to amaze with her mutations. The proof is next Saturday, when the British singer will be at Place Bell to present her latest album, I Inside the Old Year Dying. A beautiful and rare visit. A look back in five discs at a unique journey.

Dry (1992)

The rock world didn’t see this slap coming. It’s 1992, just before the grunge revolution. A little woman, as thin as a tooth, is revealed thanks to Drya gripping and brutal record drawing on blues, rock and feminist punk songs. The references are multiple, but the result is unique. Starting with this burning voice emerging from the bowels of the Earth, and her own bowels, which she exposes with fury and vulnerability, against a backdrop of power trio uncompromising. PJ Harvey was born.

To Bring You My Love (1995)

Third album for the frail Polly Jean Harvey, who confirms here that she was not just a flash in the pan. On the total fringes of the Riot Grrrl movement, with which some would like to associate her, the British singer-songwriter demonstrates once again that she is in a class of her own. The sound is still rock, but the arrangements have expanded and her sonic palette has grown, as has her poetic and theatrical universe, which highlights her menacing voice. With To Bring You My LovePJ Harvey definitely comes out of the underground. In Montreal, she performs at the Olympia, while two years earlier, she played at the small Club Soda on Parc Avenue.

Stories from the Cities, Stories from the Sea (2000)

The album of consecration… commercial. With this fifth offering, PJ Harvey seems to want to fall into line. The production is more polished, the songs simpler and catchier, not to say more predictable. With Stories from the Cities…her biggest success to date, PJ Harvey becomes the first woman to win the prestigious Mercury Prize, and earns a Grammy nomination. The critics love it. Except us.

White Chalk (2007)

Change of direction for the singer. PJ Harvey leaves her rock roots here to explore the British folk tradition, with a kind of gothic romanticism and haunted ballads of great disturbing beauty. More discreet, the guitar gives way to the old piano in the attic full of cobwebs. The voice seems to float like the ghost of itself that appears on the vaguely Victorian-inspired cover. The result is both dark and bright. Between parentheses and transition, a new creative path appears.

I Inside the Old Year Dying (2023)

Unlike many of her contemporaries, who have fallen out of fashion or been forgotten, PJ Harvey is still at the forefront of rock exploration. At 55, she continues to develop her very personal tapestry of music and poetry (using old regional dialects of England) with strange melodies that seem to come out of old bewitched grimoires. Between rock, local folk, old school electronics and sound archives, I Inside the Old Year Dying is slowly tamed and can be addictive. We are far from the furious guitars of Drywhich some early fans may regret. But we must recognize the astonishing evolution of this extraordinary artist… who will surely not deliver a banal concert on Saturday at Place Bell in Laval.

PJ Harvey at Place Bell, September 21, at 8 p.m.

Visit the artist’s website (in English)