http://www.insidebayarea.com/timesstar/ci_17854822Review: PJ Harvey highlights brilliant new album at Warfield
By Jim Harrington
Oakland Tribune
Posted: 04/15/2011 03:12:44 AM PDT
Updated: 04/15/2011 03:12:57 AM PDT
PJ Harvey was channeling her inner Bjork.
She appeared onstage on Thursday night at San Francisco's Warfield Theatre wearing a vintage white gown, more appropriate for the Victorian era than modern times, and then stood nearly motionless in front of the microphone as she clutched an autoharp to her chest.
The most arresting visual was what topped Harvey's head like a crown -- a two-tiered black feathered headdress that made it look like two wings had sprouted from her skull. When she moved, the "wings" flapped.
It wasn't quite Bjork's famed "swan dress," but it also wasn't that far off.
The 41-year-old vocalist looked as if she'd stepped straight out of the pages of some bizarre fantasy graphic novel, one that freely mixed Tolkien, Grimm Brothers and Wagnerian imagery. Inhabiting this persona, she seemed perfectly "out of time" as she set about sharing tales so resonant for our times.
The bulk of the concert hailed from "Let England Shake," Harvey's eighth studio album and an early contender for record of the year. The highly moving concept work addresses the impact of war, in all its many shapes and sizes, yet not in an overly preachy way. Harvey simply plays the storyteller on these songs, leaving the morals to be discerned by the individual listener.
"Let England Shake," as fans found out at the Warfield, is also a very difficult work to translate to a rock club. That's not due to the complexity of the music, but rather because of its simplicity. These are delicate numbers, built from centuries-old British folk traditions and sung with a vastly softer voice than what we've come to expect from Harvey, and they don't mingle well with clinking bottles, idle chitchat or T-shirt sales.
More so than any album in recent memory, "Let England Shake" is a work that you must be able to hear the precise lyrics to get the full effect. Even a symphony hall might not do it full justice -- this music whispers out for an even more intimate setting, like a private concert in some British manor's library.
That's as impractical as it is improbable, I know, but there were still times at the Warfield when I wished I could block out the other 2,199 people at the sold-out show and just listen to the music on my headphones.
Not surprisingly, the slightly more up-tempo songs -- especially the ones where Harvey traded in the autoharp for the electric guitar -- worked best at the Warfield. Some of the standouts from the new album were "The Words That Maketh Murder," "Written on the Forehead" and "In the Dark Places."
Backed by a nimble three-piece band -- which included multi-instrumentalists John Parish (a longtime Harvey collaborator) and Mick Harvey (best known for his work with Nick Cave) -- the vocalist opened the show with the title track to "Let England Shake" and then veered from the track listing.
The decision to mix up the numbers, and even throw in a few older songs, worked better than expected. "Let England Shake" fits together so seamlessly that my initial impression was that it should only be heard from start to finish, in order. My thoughts on that matter changed midway through Thursday's set, as I realized that these songs -- which are really short stories -- could offer different things through new juxtaposition; that context, as it does with most great artists like Harvey, would come into play.
I left the concert with the strong desire to immediately put on the record. That's not a sign that the Warfield performance was inferior to the album, but rather a compliment to Harvey, who had somehow managed to make me even more intrigued by a batch of songs I was already enamored with.
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Like Hell, I struck out recording it! 
I don't know what the heck happened. Still trying to diagnose what went wrong. I think there's a good chance others taped it though since it was apparent the Warfield is not strict about this. I do have hopes for my video (entire gig, 720p, left side balcony front). A quick look this morning shows that it looks pretty good. Haven't listened to the sound though. There was a plexiglas barrier between my camera and the balcony edge which probably impacted things. 
I'm fairly certain I got the whole thing though. We'll see. The timing was ideal: swapped the battery during the encore.