PJ HARVEY

With each of her striking reinventions, some of the Dorset chameleon’s finest songs fell through the cracks, surfacing only as demos, live bootlegs or B-sides

‘Oh My Lover’

(Peel Sessions, 1991)

It’s strange to think of the then 22-year old Polly Jean Harvey recording her first John Peel session – back when she still performed as the PJ Harvey Trio – with none of the ceremony that surrounds her today. On the back of just her debut single, ‘Dress’, Peel invited her to perform on his show, understanding precisely how special Harvey was. There she performed the song that eventually opened her first album, ‘Dry’, with thrilling, orgasmic force. She teeters between consoling and commanding a lover she shares with another, before “that colour forming around [their] eyes” ignites a cold, piercing fury.

‘M-Bike’

(From ‘4-Track Demos, 1993)

“But I won’t let it get to me / Yeah, he can play with his machine”: it doesn’t take a staggering mental leap to guess that ‘M-Bike’ isn’t necessarily about a bloke buffing up his metalwork – especially when he uses it to “take that lady coasting west / Ride his motor over the edge”, which makes Polly shriek, “Yeah, I could break her”. Cripes. Here, she’s a woman seriously scorned, veering from cold, lofty jealousy to bellowing Beelzebub in the time it takes to boil a very small bunny rabbit, bludgeoning guitars stoking the cauldron fire.

‘Primed And Ticking’

(Live bootleg, approx 1991 – 1993)

“You gorgeous stack of pancakes, you / You’re going nowhere ‘til I’m through”: this sounds more like a line delivered by a deranged child in Roald Dahl’s Revolting Rhymes than a come-on, but then PJ’s idea of romance has never been a copy of Men Are From Mars and More’s ‘Position Of The Week’. This rare live bootleg displays a side of her rarely seen nowadays – promising, “trust me baby, I’ll rub you right”, before howling, “I think I’m ticking!” over huge, roughshod guitars, eventually broiling over into wordless, louche moans. Come on Polly, get it back on the setlists.

‘Darling Be There’

(B-side, ‘C’mon Billy’, 1995)

In comparison to the taut orchestration of ‘C’mon Billy’ – from PJ Harvey’s first album with now-longterm producer, Flood – ‘Darling Be There’ is curiously formless. Droning organ hangs like a moribund fog, floating along aimlessly alongside Harvey’s voice – here, deep and drawling like an actress delivering her dying words – which begs, “Take me over, pale blue water / Take me under, take me home”, a theme of watery death that crops up regularly throughout her early work. There’s no percussion other than some incidental, eerie background clatters, making this feel more like a loose sketch than a finished piece.

‘Claudine, The Inflatable One’

(From unofficial bootleg CD ‘Jungle Queen’, 1996)

Polly’s always sung about perspectives from other people’s bodies, so it’s not really much of a surprise that here, she’s a sleazy predator with a peccadillo for sex dolls, leering, “Want to get right in your sack o’sack o’skin”. The faltering saxophone fanfare gives the whole affair a Beefheart-gone-cabaret strut, as she riffles through reams of pervy preferences – “I’ll show you sugar / Add a juggle and a dice / Nail my beard to the bathroom door” – before promising to “scream blue murder”. So much for a night in your thermals with a nice cuppa cocoa, then.

‘Naked Cousin’

(The Crow: City Of Angels OST, 1996)

The sequel to The Crow got terrible reviews, but is remarkable for two things: firstly, Iggy Pop’s noted performance, and secondly, PJ Harvey’s appearance on the soundtrack with the depraved ‘Naked Cousin’. Released just before she began writing the more downbeat ‘Is This Desire?’, it’s one of the last vestiges of Polly’s “Joan Crawford on acid” era, thick with squawking blues guitar and castigating growls as she details her philandering relative’s sprint across the land, away from her wrath. “My naked cousin can cook ‘til he’s good and done,” she intones, terrifyingly. Bet Christmas dinner round the Harvey family table’s a right laugh.

‘Rebecca’

(B-side, ‘The Wind’, 1998)

PJ Harvey’s fourth album, ‘Is This Desire?’, catalogued the inevitable fates of its female characters during a period when Harvey’s own health was in dispute. ‘Joy’ was blinded, ‘Catherine’ “damned to hell”, the Catherine of ‘The Wind’ saw “torture on the wheel”, and ‘My Beautiful Leah’ “only had nightmares”. Perhaps that’s why ‘Rebecca’ didn’t make it onto the album, featuring instead as a b-side to its second single; here she finds “love here by the sea”, and it’s only Polly’s quivering, unusually tiny voice, drowned by a single, reverberating guitar note, that suggests coastal bliss wasn’t necessarily on the cards.

‘30’

(B-side, ‘Good Fortune’, 2002)

Even though Harvey’s 2000 album, ‘Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea’, marked her most mainstream collection, in reality, it’s Polly as outlaw, prowling New York’s streets, firearm in hand. On ‘Big Exit’, she cries, “I want a pistol! I want a gun!”, an obsession continued on ‘30’: “I often think of America, I often dream of shooting a gun”. US Border Control, avert your ears. This b-side is far less glossy than the album – just warped, billowing blues guitar, and Polly whispering up close about the trials of turning 30. Surprisingly, fitting all the candles on your birthday cake isn’t on her shit-list.

‘You Come Through’

(Posthumous Peel Session, 2004)

Six weeks after John Peel’s death, the BBC organised night of tributes to the much beloved DJ. PJ Harvey recorded nine sessions for Peel over 13 years, so it was a no-brainer that she’d return to pay her respects. In this sombre environment, an economically strummed ‘You Come Through’ becomes a love letter to a man who always believed in her. It’s hard not to weep when her otherwise uncharacteristically smooth voice cracks on, “come on my friends, drink to good times”, and harder still to hear her belting the chorus – probably the only way she could get through the entire song.

‘Stone’

(B-side, ‘You Come Through’, 2004)

For her sixth album, ‘Uh Huh Her’, PJ Harvey reverted to the template for ‘4-Track Demos’ – recording everything alone, and drafting in only Rob Ellis to provide drum tracks. However, this b-side features just Polly and a reverberating bluesy guitar loop, all rather pared down. Structurally, it feels similar to ‘The Sky Lit Up’ from ‘Is This Desire?’, as she histrionically details the unfolding of the weather – “and all the hills were rolling / and all the clouds unraveled” – but without the full release of that song; ‘Stone’ feels castrated, as though there’s a spitting creature in it squirming to escape.

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Tags: lost songs, NME, PJ Harvey