We’re sitting in the blazing sunshine in London’s Gunnersbury Park.
It’s a Sunday afternoon and things are rather nice, really. There are young couples around us, enjoying the atmosphere. Families with children saunter softly over the green grass, pausing only to pick up ice creams from the van parked a few feet to our left. Twenty-somethings are lounging, thirty-somethings are chattering, and a legion of forty-somethings have arrived armed with cider and an almost reckless enthusiasm for the pursuit of a good time. It is, frankly, bliss.
Oh, and about thirty metres away from us, an artist named Polly Jean Harvey is playing the show of her life.
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What we failed to mention, dear reader, is that we’re at a PJ Harvey concert – and that, just in front of the aforementioned scene of serenity, there’s a crowd of over twenty thousand people absolutely losing their minds.
You see, a PJ Harvey gig isn’t like most shows of this size. There’s no singular hit that the audience are loitering impatiently until the encore to hear and there are no maximalist theatrics or crowd-pleasing audience participatory moments; in fact, there’s not even a hint of this being anything other than a normal day at the office for the two-time Mercury Prize-winning artist.
But alas, this situation is anything but normal. Not only is this the biggest headline show that Harvey’s playing this year, but we’d also be willing to bet that it’s amongst the most rapturous. It’s hard to articulate how a crowd can be simultaneously buoyant and silently attentive; but today, in this West London expanse, PJ Harvey has somehow commanded both hushed respect and furious devotion from the same packed-out crowd. And that, reader, is a sight to behold.
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Of course, the secret to Harvey’s control of her audience lies in the mastery of her craft.
And it’s this craft – specifically, the creation and performance of meticulously crafted, gorgeously intricate, and jawdroppingly intimate alt-rock songs – that’s rightly earned her the respect of her peers, contemporaries, critics, and crowd. She’s the only artist ever to have earned two Mercury Prize wins (as well as eight BRIT Award nominations and a further eight GRAMMY nods), and that’s for a reason – she’s really rather good at this. Her songs are sprawling, multi-faceted works, and yet not an ounce of their intended intimacy is lost in a venue of this size. Her performance is calm, yet charismatic, and perfectly suited to a Sunday afternoon. The songs aired from Harvey’s latest long-player, 2023’s I Inside the Old Year Dying, already sound every inch a classic; indeed, it’s sometimes hard to distinguish the crowd’s enthusiasm for Harvey’s earlier-career cuts from its rapt responses to even the most obscure of album tracks from her later releases.
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And then, almost as soon as it began, it’s over.
One last chord, one final glance, and Polly Jean Harvey departs the stage. There was never a doubt in any sane person’s mind that she’s one of the defining artists of her scene; but tonight, she seems to have solidified her reputation as one of the artists of her generation.