new promo for the japanese shows https://rollingstonejapan.com/articles/ ... 2233/2/1/1

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Nice to hear a little about her fitness regime - I wondered about that!

oh and...





PJ Harvey talks about his musical life in "Love and Struggle", the end of a tour that connects the past and the present
Hiroko Shintani ｜2025/02/04 18:00

PJ Harvey = Polly Jean Harvey, who boasts an unparalleled stage presence in the contemporary alternative rock world, will embark on a Japan tour in March. Ahead of her first visit to Japan in eight years, we had a valuable interview with her. He carefully answered each of the questions that focused on the content of the tour and his commitment as a live performer.

In retrospect, Polly has taken to the stage with a different personality and approach on each album, and this one is no exception with a four-piece band, including longtime buddy John Parrish. The highlight is the structure divided into two sections. In the first act, she plays her latest novel, "I Inside the Old Year Dying," released in 2023, which puts the world of her second poetry collection "Orlam" (2022) into music, which established her reputation as a poet. This will be Polly's first attempt at a live re-enactment of the album, and it will allow her to indulge in the world of I Inside the Old Year Dying, which is set in her hometown of Dorset and uses a lot of local phrases. In the second part of the show, he will present a selection of his previous works, including the well-known "To Bring You My Love," covering his career. "It's been a long time since I've been in Japan, so I'm really looking forward to it," she said, but especially after the Tokyo performance on March 18 and the Osaka performance on March 19, it must be an emotional night for her as it is the finale of a long tour, and she can't afford to miss Polly after a long absence.

The tour for I Inside the Old Year Dying started in September '23 and by the end of last year had 66 shows, including numerous festival appearances, leaving only 8 shows in Australia and Japan in March. Please tell us about your response at the moment.

PJ Harvey: It was a really fun tour. Every time I plan a tour, I form a new band based on the musicality of the album at the time, and I revamp the stage design and staging. So this time, I first thought about what the music expressed in "I Inside the Old Year Dying" would require, and then I chose the band members. In addition, on tour after his seventh film, "White Chalk" (2007), Ian Rickson (* Like Polly, he has been a stage director who has been active in the British theater world since the 90s. He has worked on many high-profile productions at the National Theatre and other venues, and he has given me a lot of direction, from the stage design and choreography to my own attitude on stage and the performance itself. Again, it's really reassuring to have a creative team of set designers and lighting designers.

You toured in conjunction with your previous album, The Hope Six Demolition Project (2016), and in recent years, you've been touring for a year or two, with breakthroughs in between. How do you prepare yourself mentally and physically for a long journey?

PJ Harvey: Yes, you have to be prepared in every way, but physically, you have to be in as good shape as possible, so I do exercises every day, like yoga, Pilates, swimming and walking. And in order to adjust the condition of the voice, I do not miss vocal practice twice a day at least one month before the start of rehearsal. I've learned from experience that the vocal cord muscles should be treated the same as any other muscle, whether it's an arm or a leg. In other words, exercises with a load are essential. That way, when you start rehearsing, you're in the best condition, so you can sing for 3-4 hours a day, or even more. On the other hand, in terms of mental health, it is necessary to prepare mentally based on the reality that you will not be able to go home for a long time. You have to let go of the familiar and comfortable environment and accept the inevitability of touring, where the environment around you changes every day. Plus, you'll be away from friends and family, so instead you'll make new friendships and find new families with the people you'll be with during the tour. In my case, there are a total of 18 people, 5 of whom are members of the band, including myself, and the rest are crew members below the tour manager.

Do you always think about how to present your show on stage from the stage of making an album?

PJ Harvey: That's right. I'm already thinking about ideas as I'm writing a song. What kind of visuals does it entail? What kind of costume is appropriate? And so on. After all, I used to be a visual artist. If I hadn't become a musician, I would have gone on to a bachelor's degree in fine arts. I knew that was the way I wanted to go, and visual presentations have played an important role in my musical career. There's nothing more fun than experimenting with sound and words, but for me, visuals are also an integral part of shaping musical expression. Therefore, while writing songs, I identify the appropriate sound for those songs, and by expanding my imagination based on that sound, I am able to imagine the visual presentation such as costumes and lighting from an early stage. It evolves throughout the process of making an album, and if the musical direction is unexpectedly sidetracked, for example, the visual direction will also change. Through these experiences, I learned the importance of keeping an open mind at all times. When I'm younger, I tend to stick to my ideas from the beginning, saying, "I want to make this," but now I know that I shouldn't impose immovable restrictions on things. We have to have the courage to draw a rough direction, not stick to it, let it change, open up another path, and watch the new direction deepen on its own.

This performance is divided into two parts, and in the first act, you perform "I Inside the Old Year Dying" in its entirety. Please tell us how you came to take this form.

PJ Harvey: I think "I Inside the Old Year Dying" is a piece of music that takes on a kind of magic, or trance, quality when you listen to the whole song in order. I didn't want to tear apart that kind of atmosphere. And, of course, whenever I'm on tour, I'm most excited about the latest album (laughs). That's why I felt that what I wanted to do most was to recreate "I Inside the Old Year Dying," which has not been completed for a long time, in its entirety without disturbing the atmosphere of the film. And with the help of Ian, we created the world that we enter in the first act. In fact, I think it turned out very well as a show. The album is about 45 minutes long, and the next 45 minutes of the second act are used to play songs from previous works, but the more widely known songs from the second act are full of energy and carry different memories for each audience, so this is where you can release the tension of the first act at once. Of course, we breathe new life into old songs by adding new interpretations in line with the sonic orientation of I Inside the Old Year Dying.

If so, do the first and second acts complement each other?

PJ Harvey: Definitely. I feel that the extremely pure atmosphere of the first act enhances the great sense of liberation of the second act Past songs that breathe new life into them, the meaning behind stage costumes

I'd like to ask you about the setlist for the second act, but at the beginning of the show, you include three songs from the eighth film, Let England Shake (2011). Needless to say, that album was a work that delved into the horrors and follies of war with World War I as its main source of inspiration, but did you choose a lot of songs from that album based on what's happening in Ukraine and Palestine?

PJ Harvey: That's exactly what I was trying to do. Those songs are still as urgent as they were when they were released, and it's very interesting and reassuring to see that every time there's a new war somewhere in the world, the album Let England Shake has a new raison d'être. Because humans are human, they always cause friction and violence with others. Therefore, the importance of the album is not diminished. So, on this tour, after the first act, we leave the lonely, inner world of love and struggle in I Inside the Old Year Dying and immediately turn our attention to the outside world, to the present world, and to delve into the love and struggle that is taking place there.

The second act also covers some of the earliest songs that you haven't played in a while, such as your 1991 debut singles "Dress" and "Man-Size."

PJ Harvey: yes. I always rely on my instincts to choose songs that I can sing authentically at any given time. Humans are constantly evolving, so the selection is always changing. There are times when I can't express the same song well. So this time, I put together a set of songs that I thought I could sing authentically and bring to life at the age of 55, or songs that I could find a way to sing authentically. Some of the songs just made me miss myself. I love it so much that I wanted to sing it for the first time in a long time. In other words, do you miss the song, do you like it, do you want to play it, can you bring the song to life, believe in the lyrics 100% and sing it convincingly to ...... audience. We choose them based on these various conditions.

And the finale of most of the performances is "White Chalk." It starts with I Inside the Old Year Dying, set in the forests of your hometown of Dorset, and ends with a return to the white limestone (= White Chalk) cliffs of Dorset.

PJ Harvey: That's true. Even in visual expression, there is a link between the opening and the ending. The choreography of the first song, "Prayer At The Gate," emphasizes the movement of the hands and arms, and the choreography of "White Chalk" is similar. That cycle from the opening to the ending is something that Ian and I were very particular about.


Please tell us about the 2007 live video of "White Chalk" - the meaning behind the costumes. Designer Todd Lynn, who has collaborated with us for many years, prepared a creamy white dress and cape.

PJ Harvey: Todd and I started talking about costumes two years before we started touring. He's also my best friend, so we see each other a lot and we can exchange ideas easily. I also collaborated with Todd on a poetry reading tour reading Orlam, and as an extension of that, I came up with a costume for the album tour. For the poetry reading, I wore a dress embroidered based on the drawings I had made for the poetry book, and the cape I wore on stage this time also has those drawings printed on it. On the other hand, when it came to dresses, I designed them purely for live performances, prioritizing comfort and practicality, but at the same time, I felt like I was projecting music onto a blank canvas. It's a beautiful, spiritual, blank canvas on which to project your music. That's why I didn't want to make it an elaborate design. The music, the songs, the dresses, so I wanted to get rid of the elements that get in the way of the songs. And the movement of layering and taking off the cape is also part of the emotional journey that we follow through live performance.


I've heard that you prepared a separate dress for each performance, and after each gig, you and the band members take turns drawing pictures for each performance. And I heard that you wore that dress at the final performance in each region on stage, but if that is the case, you will wear a dress that records your trip to Australia and Japan at the Osaka performance on March 19.

PJ Harvey: Exactly. In the first place, the fabric of this dress was originally used for temporary sewing, and it was not of very high quality, and it could not withstand repeated wear, so I prepared a large number of spares (laughs). There were so many of them that we decided to draw a picture, and we made it a condition that it not only be named after the performance location, but also linked to the songs that were included in the set that day. In the end, a very beautiful piece of art was created, and by the time you stand on the stage in Osaka, you should have a new one. When the tour is over, we plan to donate it to a museum.

After the impulses of your youth, what do you think now as an artist – now that you have been performing live for more than 30 years, what has changed in terms of the significance of being on stage and your relationship with the audience?

PJ Harvey: I've been writing songs since I was 16, but I didn't start singing in front of people until I was 18, and I didn't start performing live regularly until I was about 21 or 22. But it's been so long that I honestly don't remember exactly how I felt at the time. If you ask my friends about the fact that my memory is unreliable, I think they will all agree (laughs). If there's one thing that sticks in my mind, it's the strong desire to show the audience a performance that no one has ever seen. For me it was a very important point. I wanted to make a deep impression on people's hearts.

On the other hand, what hasn't changed since now is our attitude of always trying something new. As artists, we have a kind of natural rhythm, and we tend to do the same thing over and over again. So as you progress in your career, it's going to get harder and harder to put it into practice, so you need to push yourself out of your comfort zone and detach yourself from that familiar rhythm. By doing so, we raise the bar. As a performer, I'm always looking for new approaches to the way I sing, how I move my body, and how I communicate with my audience, so that I can excite myself and the audience as well. I've always had this desire to create new forms of expression since I was in junior high school, when I was creating art works such as drawings and paintings, and I didn't want to repeat what I knew I could do. I didn't want to do what I was good at. I thought, "I don't know how to do this, but what will the results be if I try it?" and I put all my effort into stepping into unfamiliar territory. There is a lot of fear involved, but there is also a lot to be gained if you succeed. This curiosity has not diminished at all.

In that sense, "I Inside the Old Year Dying," which takes your poetry as a starting point, is a new endeavor, and your cinematic musicality, which makes extensive use of ambient sounds, greatly reflects your composer side, as you have recently composed music for many plays and TV dramas. Do you feel like it's a natural consequence that you've gotten here?

PJ Harvey: I touched on intuition earlier, but I've learned throughout my life that you should trust your intuition and let it guide you. "I Inside the Old Year Dying" is based on that philosophy. When I began to write the poems that would later evolve into Orlam, I felt the need to return to what I could call "small landscapes." This is because both "Let England Shake" and "The Hope Six Demolition Project" are works that have an open eye and look to the outside world, and they deal with heavy subjects related to world affairs, such as wars and violence that are happening in various places. But my gut told me that I had to go back to a very small space next. The attempt at weaving a single character, a forest, and a single story in Orlam provided me with a space to replenish my energy, internalize things, and have a new dialogue with myself. That's what I needed. That's how I came up with my own answers, but I've always followed my instincts as a person and as an artist at any given time. Otherwise, I don't think I can create the best work for myself at that moment.

Orlam took eight years to complete, so the end of the tour in March marks the end of a creative journey that has lasted more than a decade. Do you feel a sense of loneliness? Or is it a certain sense of liberation?

PJ Harvey: It's liberating, and I've actually already started writing songs for a new album and I've started working on a new piece of poetry. So right now, I'm excited about the new world I'm shaping little by little. Of course, it's sad to say goodbye to the band and say goodbye to live performances. After all, the songs on I Inside the Old Year Dying have been a part of me for a really long time. But this was a very happy farewell, and I'm sure I'll have more opportunities to sing in the future, and I'm looking forward to the day when I can perform my next piece on stage again.


Lastly, you mentioned earlier that when you were younger, you wanted to give a performance that no one had ever seen. I think that as you get older, you can let go of the preoccupations and ideals of your youth and become free, but what about you?

PJ Harvey: That's right. Certainly, when I was younger, I stood on stage with the stance of "This is the first time in everyone's life that we have witnessed such an amazing performance!" The intention was to shock people. That aspect may have been present in the song as well. It may have been frighteningly loud or frighteningly quiet in the power of the music itself, in its violent lyrics, or in its outlandish costumes. But over time, the way you see things changes, and I realized that presenting something that no one has ever seen before is an extremely difficult goal. And when I listen to the music that young musicians make, I think, "yes, that sounds cool, but the Ramones didn't do it anymore...... It's something that old people seem to say, but that's the way it is (laughs). When you're older, you listen to a lot of music, so it's really hard to find unexplored places.

At the same time, I realized that all works of art are created by inheriting works of art made in the past, and I felt very humbled. As artists, we absorb everything that surrounds us, including the works of other artists, and the accumulation of them is expressed in other forms. Everything is backed up by what happened in the past, and in some cases can be traced back thousands of years. In a way, it's like a tradition that humanity has passed down from generation to generation throughout history. It's as if we are absorbing the past, adding some new elements to it, and rolling a huge sphere that is getting bigger and bigger and passing it on to the next generation. That's why I'm still trying to forge a new path, but I'm trying to do it with the understanding that everything is rooted in the accumulation of the past. I didn't understand that when I was younger. I now have a deep sense of respect and gratitude for this fact.

She's been talking about this new album for quite a while now ( i think AT LEAST for a year now? i'll go check the various threads), wouldn't be surprised if we get some substantial news before the end of 2025.

Glad she's keeping herself in perfect shape. You can really see it live, she has an amazing and healthy voice.

Is this available online? sunday times magazine perth https://www.instagram.com/stmperth/p/DGDFpCrNVcA/

I suspect it's only on print, can't find it anywhere online. Bummer

It's up now but it's paywalled: https://thewest.com.au/lifestyle/stm/pj ... c-17556201

Perth Big Day Out 2001