LIVE: P J HARVEY – Perth Festival, 4 March 2025

LIVE: P J HARVEY – Perth Festival, 4 March 2025
P J Harvey with Mick Turner and Mindy Meng Wang
Kings Park Botanical Gardens, Perth, Western Australia
Reviewed by Shane Pinnegar
Photography by Damien Crocker

Over half an hour bird and animal sounds and a tolling bell merge slowly with atmospheric rumblings from the blue lit stage in the middle of Perth’s scenic Kings Park Botanical Gardens on a clear early autumn night as show time grows near. It’s a reminder that we’re not in just for a rock n’ roll show, we’re here for an evening of art.

Unfortunately, we missed the openers due to a transportation snafu, but all reports indicate stylish and classy sets from both Dirty Three sideman Mick Turner and Mindy Meng Wang.

With the sun set the soundscape reaches its climax and the band take their places, allowing Polly Jean Harvey to make a low-key entrance. She pauses for a moment, allowing excited applause to wash over the stage and the park, then launches into the “do do-do-do-do” strains of new album opener Prayer At The Gate.

The album, I Inside The Old Year Dying, is her first new record in seven or so years, and began life as an epic collection of poems she wrote titled Orlam. It’s a work steeped in a nature-based, more pastoral sound than her earlier offerings, allowing her unique style to enthral the thousands of watchers as if by some entrancing magic.

Wearing a white outfit emblazoned with her own artwork of the fictional Orlam forest, she in turn dances ethereally, plays guitar or autoharp, and enthrals like the embodiment of a mythological wood nymph. She really is something to watch and hear, and her band – featuring long-time collaborator John Parish and drummer Jean-Marc Butty – are there with her in every moment.

Harvey is a witchy priestess, a musical hypnotist manipulating soundwaves right in front of our eyes, the warmth emanating from the stage surely comforting to those feeling the cooler night air.

With the album finished Harvey leaves the stage and we think it’s intermission time – but we’re proven wrong as the band deliver The Colour Of The Earth like an acoustic shanty of sorts front of stage.

Just like that, without fanfare, we’re revisiting some of PJ Harvey’s indie years, starting with The Glorious Land and The Words That Maketh Murder, rejigged to fit this mellower sound.

Every song in the show is met with equal enthusiasm and approval, but some of the earlier tracks are more equal than others, if you get my drift.

Point in question is 50 Ft Queenie, as intense as ever even when delivered as more of a bucolic ramble than the overt grunginess of the original, and the lyrics “I’m one big Queen – nothing can touch me” seemed perfectly appropriate tonight.

The Garden is sultry and brooding above an airy arrangement; The Desperate Kingdom Of Love is delivered like a Johnny Cash number, all plaintiff sincerity from Harvey solo with acoustic guitar; Man Size remains an exciting and anthemic feminist F.U.; Down By The Water is a pulsating force of nature.

Finally, Harvey addresses the crowd, humble, sincere and appreciative after delivering a startlingly engaging performance. To Bring You My Love closes out the set proper, a dark classic reminiscent of former paramour Nick Cave’s work from the same period.

An encore of C’Mon Billy and White Chalk finish a simply magnificent show, and given Harvey quit music for a half dozen years, we’re privileged that she’s found her way back to it and returned to deliver such a transcendent and classy performance.

Set List:

Prayer at the Gate
Autumn Term
Lwonesome Tonight
The Nether-Edge
I Inside the Old Year Dying
A Child’s Question, August
I Inside the Old I Dying
A Child’s Question, July
A Noiseless Noise

The Colour of the Earth
The Glorious Land
The Words That Maketh Murder
50ft Queenie
Black Hearted Love
The Garden
The Desperate Kingdom of Love
Man-Size
Dress
Down by the Water
To Bring You My Love

C’mon Billy
White Chalk

 

Category: Live Reviews, Photo Galleries