Hi! I'm a third year student at a music school in Norway, and I'm writing my depth study about PJ Harvey. As I'm not very familiar with PJ Harvey, except her music, I am in need of some help.

The essay is based on this issue/question:

How has PJ Harvey's life influenced her music? - A dive into the depths of the significance of PJ Harvey's biography, as a background for her distinctive expression and music.

May be quite a bad translation... (:
The essay needs an analysis of some of her songs, which I haven't picked yet. I have gotten the biography Siren Rising, but I need other material and more sources. It would be great if anyone could help out, if you have something, any ideas.

Thanks!

Welcome Delilah!

Other than Blandford's biography there is very little published information on Polly's personal life as it regards her music. The only thing I can think of is trying to dig up magazine interviews from the past 20 years of her career. I don't know of any central repository of these unfortunately. The old room509 site had a very good list of them (including their text), but that site is only available as an archive now:
http://web.archive.org/web/200805301602 ... frame.html
(click the 'articles' link on the lower right hand side of the frame).

There is a very academic treatment of Polly's album Is This Desire which was published in 2002 as a couple of chapters in the book "Disruptive divas: feminism, identity & popular music" By Lori Burns, Mélisse Lafrance. You may be able to find the book used. I actually bought it and have considered scanning the relevent chapters. Google books will let you see some pages from it. It's really just the 2 author's philosophical and musical analysis of the album. There's no attempt at connecting the song's meaning to any events in Polly's personal life.

Another music professor published an article about 10 years ago on Polly also:
http://works.bepress.com/mark_mazullo/3/

I've never seen the full text of this article, but I gather it discusses Polly's earlier albums.

The wikipedia article on Polly has a fair number of links to original articles:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PJ_Harvey

Maybe some of the folks here can dig up their articles and post them. I will say she hasn't been at all helpful in the past at explaining her song's meanings and her personal life is off limits in all but the earliest interviews.

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JelqPcoaAB8"

I think it will be very difficult essay
'cause she always says that her music/lyrics has nothing to do with her private life,
she stated often, even with White Chalk album and 'To Talk To You'...so

hard choice

I was posting about how it might be interesting to research Polly's ancestry, but it was turning out to be an essay on atavism ...

I'm convinced she has Iberian (or Basque) genes somewhere along the line. Quite apart from her looks, 'The Dancer', the beginning of her first 'Man Size' video & her vocalisations in 'Hook' suggest flamenco & balmy Spanish evenings to me. I strongly suspect it's a combination of that plus a slightly bonkers upbringing overlaid with English restraint & good manners that have contributed towards this phenomenal human being

didn't Polly mention once (just a few years ago) that she had made some genealogical research into her family background and found that both her parents were descended exclusively from people who lived (for generations back) in the English Midlands? but of course, this wouldn't exclude the possibility of some Iberian immigrant element in that background. however it is far from necessary to postulate a genetic (I mean physio-genetic) component to Polly's passion for Spanish culture. (psycho-genesis should suffice.) but still the matter of her looks, that surely is cause for wondering...

by the way, I love your phrase "a slightly bonkers upbringing overlaid with English restraint & good manners". thank you for formulating it!

_________________
I'd do anything
To see you again
I'd do anything

Ok. I'm probably getting a touch obsessive, but something triggered my conviction about the Polly Spanish connection again, something about the Cornish & Northern France. I thought it was Basque, but no, it turned out to be Brittany. What's more, it turns out there are very strong links between the Celts, Brittany & Galicia in Spain:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breton_language

The 6th century map is interesting.

Then I looked up Galicia & found this lady:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalia_de_Castro

Personally I think it's a little bit spooky, but perhaps I'm just fooling myself. Something about that face though ...

^ Fascinating! I was aware of the Breton language connection with France, but not the Spanish region of Galicia. There is a Cornish/Breton language link with the West country dialect:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Count ... _influence

Apparently up until recently, but it's died out in the last 70-80 years.

You're right, it's spooky how Rosalia's features are remarkably similar to Polly's and her poetry being "an almost ineffable combination of nostalgia, longing and melancholy" sounds remarkably similar to Polly's canon. Excellent find!

It must be said though that the modern Galacian language is not descended from Breton, but has Romance language roots.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galicia_(Spain)

_________________
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JelqPcoaAB8"

polly private life? good luck lol
i dont mean to offend, but polly is not tori amos or alanis morissette, her personal life issues may have very unconscious and subjective influence on her work even for her to understand or care about.
if you start with the ancestors part, you could have something interesting on just her 2 most recent records (WC, LES) and that would be interesting in fact, and focused.
but for her whole work, i think you should try some other approach, and one more related to music academically speaking, like some possible lecture on polly aesthetic as a symptom of the retro wave of music nowdays back on the 90's already, or even how it can be underlined on the alternative rock movement from the 90's since she brings to rock many elements of other kinds of genres (and specially the way she does it).
polly is fertile ground to talk about music in a academical way, talking about her personal life is not too much about music essentially, not when you talk about pj at least, all youll get is just speculations apart her ancestral interest, there are no authorized biographies of her around and she is as closed as a grave about it.