In 1995, Polly Harvey reinvented herself as a pink catsuit-wearing vamp peddling an album of stormy gothic American blues. But was it really such a surprise? Ben Hewitt argues the transformation only put up in lights what Harvey had already shown: she was an actor as much as a singer

Though now twenty-five years old officially on February 27, there are few – if any – albums that successfully navigate the treacherous seas of creativity, weirdness, beauty, and intelligence on such a mythic level, appealing to the casual fan and the devoted purist alike.

For my money, that was the most exciting concert I’ve ever played. It was my favorite show that I played with Polly. The quality of the shows varied a lot. Polly was in a great deal of emotional back-and-forth about whether she wanted to be a slick, tight, knock-em-over-the-head rock pop star, or a gnomic cult singer songwriter not at all interested in pandering to the audience. She was only 25 at the time, and it was back-and-forth a lot. We’d have one show that would be very put together, and then she’d have a change of heart and do a show that was more willfully amateurish and ramshackle, less lights and production, less volume and less transition. That was a dynamic that went back-and-forth for a lot of the time that I was playing with her. But the Glastonbury show was the pinnacle of the big tight rock show.