Always re-inventing, Polly Jean Harvey is a throwback to the likes of David Bowie, in terms of ever-changing stylistic representation, and is probably the best example of a contemporary artist who is able to remodel without covering up or messing up the initial essence that makes them who they are. Although of course she is not as extreme a stylistic chameleon as Bowie was, she similarly knows the power of image and personality in aiding engagement and inspiration within others. This means nothing though without the music, but Harvey has shown herself in recent years to be an artist willing to learn and experiment, totally engaging with her music as artform. But it was only with her last two albums, starting with 2007's White Chalk – consisting mostly of introspective piano-based ballads – that she took a decisive detour, away from her usual rock-based songs that had dominated until that point. Harvey followed through with the ground-breaking Let England Shake, which uniquely, earned her a second Mercury Music Prize, a work that ventured deep into her growing global political-social concerns that bore the hallmarks of artists she was increasingly admiring such as Bob Dylan (in his early-mid sixties heyday) and the ever experimenting, as well as profoundly political, Neil Young. Lyrically, she could be brutal and pessimistic, while musically she dampened the anger and sorrow with ethereal, textured sounds, acting as a counterweight to her songs about episodes in English history, or the Afghanistan conflict, for instance. This new found political awareness was further cemented by the release of a stand-alone song, Shaker Aamer, the name of the last British citizen to be detained at the notorious Guantanamo Bay detention centre…

It had been nearly five years since the release of Let England Shake, but Harvey had finally accumulated enough material, mostly lyrics, to start recording her ninth studio album. Holed up for a month in a custom built studio underneath Somerset House in London, and once again displaying her desire to do something different, Harvey and friends (her co-producers Flood, and long time collaborator John Parish, along with musicians Terry Edwards and Gallon Drunk's James Johnstone) shone a bright light onto the usually mystifying recording process. When The Beatles did something similar for Let It Be it kind of broke an unwritten rule that 'thou shallst not sully the glorious final product'. But even then that film was a massively edited down highlights version of thousands of hours of filming, most of it involving setting up, chatting, fooling around, drinking tea, and working on micro-scraps of material, that would have been utterly boring for those witnessing.

Thankfully, viewers to the recording process of The Hope Six Demolition Project, were only given a maximum of 45 minutes, via a one-way mirror (the length of the album, give or take) to witness a process that whilst fascinating for a short time – largely because of the physical presence of Harvey – would quickly dissipate into mild curiosity, followed by boredom. It IS fascinating for a period, and possibly for longer periods for uber-fans/studio nerds, but doesn't this opening of a normally very closed door de-mystify this most exciting of art forms, to its detriment?

But, as only 3000 people were allowed the experience of this work-in-progress, the exercise (as well as being a bona-fide recording operation) ultimately became a brilliant publicity tool for Harvey, first and foremost an artist working in the idiom of music, but one who has a very acute grasp of image, style and presentation. But what makes her truly brilliant at times, is her music, which remains to this day relatively raw, un-stylised and not particularly concerned with polish and finesse, unlike the visual representation of Harvey… Moreover, casting aside her often leering and sugary-raunchy dichotomous persona for a quest for knowledge in all things socio-political, she is more committed than ever to the importance of the sound palette, in painting her songs. Furthermore, being in her 40s, she couldn't really hope to get away with songs such as 'Black Hearted Love' and 'Easy' for ever, and this move into more profound and sophisticated 'adult' material (that's not to deny the importance of her feminist stance in her career as a whole), with an observant eye on the increasingly restless times that we live in – epitomised by the rise of both the extreme left and extreme right throughout many parts of the world – has largely been applauded and admired.

With artistic help from filmmaker and photographer Seamus Murphy (with whom she published a book together recently, marrying her poems with his photographs) The Hope Six Demolition Project reflects Harvey's growing unease at mankind's penchant for battle and blood around the globe, and the onward march of desensitising capitalism. "When I’m writing a song I visualise the entire scene. I can see the colours, I can tell the time of day, I can sense the mood, I can see the light changing, the shadows moving, everything in that picture,” she has commented, about her recent work, which sometimes now closely resembles journalistic reportage. “Gathering information from secondary sources felt too far removed for what I was trying to write about. I wanted to smell the air, feel the soil and meet the people of the countries I was fascinated with."

And so, Harvey's trips to the likes of Kosovo, Afghanistan and the USA have deeply informed her lyrics on the new album, a work in line with Let England Shake, but with a harder musicality, starting off with 'The Community of Hope', a half-reportage/half-opinionated outpouring of anger and sorrow, but tempered by the doffing of the cap to human resilience, and complimented by the rather upbeat rhythmic rock stomp groove: "Here's the Hope Six Demolition Project, OK, now this is just drug town, just zombies, but that's just life / Here's the highway pathway of death and destruction, South Capitol is its name / And the school that looks like a shit-hole, does that look like a nice place?" It's a reference to the Hope VI projects in the United States, "where run-down public housing in areas with high crime rates has been demolished to make room for better housing, but with the effect that many residents could no longer afford to live there, leading to claims of social cleansing." The song, which drew some sharp criticisms from politicians and residents from the areas in question, had been directly inspired by Harvey's trip to Washington D.C. with photographer/filmmaker Seamus Murphy, both given a tour by Paul Schwartzman of The Washington Post.

Elsewhere, a menacing Nick Cavesque industrial noise barrage informs 'The Ministry of Defence', which details a list of human detritus (fizzy drinks cans, syringes, broken glass, etc), while the gentler rhythmic musicality of A Line In The Sand has Harvey near the top of near vocal range, on the most poetic and non-specific track here, but which nevertheless questions why humans commit despicable crimes and cause suffering amongst themselves. Chain of Keys meanwhile shows a debt, unwittingly perhaps, to Anais Mitchell's concept album Hadestown, as she evocatively details the repressively enveloping desolation and destruction of war in Afghanistan, performed in a swampy chain gang style: "15 keys hang on a chain, the chain is joined and forms a ring, the ring is in woman's hand, she's walking on the dusty ground…"

Similarly, River Anacostia (an actual river in America), is loosely based on the recent newsworthy events regarding its toxification, and which rides along a stabbing organ and simple tribal drum, Harvey's ghostly and fractured vocal complimented by more chain gang hymning, on the most metaphorical track here, while The Orange Monkey demonstrates Harvey's continuing eschewing of polish, in favour of a lo-fi grittiness, like a Tom Waits backing track, but with a considered and melodiously unified male and female vocal melody line that sees Harvey explore the roots of violence.

On other tracks, such as Medicinals, she again delivers in part-reportage/part-fictional narrative, a damning indictment of the drip-drip negation of Native Americans, about how many have become dependent upon alcohol and modern prescription drugs, despite surrounded by natural remedies, medicines that are an integral part of their history and culture. And Ministry of Social Affairs is based on her visit to Kabul, documenting the sorrowful reality for many, a song that includes an old blues recording, an incessant beat, and some freestyle sax playing by Harvey, another new instrument to add her her growing arsenal. “See them sitting on the terrain, kneeling by the barricades / No-one smiling, no-one crying, staring straight back," she sings with great passion.

With The Hope Six Demolition Project, she shows herself once again to be an artist of major import, one who has decidedly moved away from the personal to the political. The results are startling, utterly fearless, informative, and inventive. As she has recently said she's been deeply affected by what's going on in the world, and despite her claims of being essentially optimistic and hopeful, there is a markedly less hopeful atmosphere in places, although it's often enlivened by the music which is sometimes playful, grooving and not as down-in-the dumps as the sometimes literal lyrics inform, and that at other times, the impressionistic lyrics imply.

But most importantly, Harvey's beating blues-punk heart of gold is pumping hard and passionately.

Jeff Hemmings

Website: pjharvey.net
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