The English singer-songwriter PJ Harvey has long mined the land of her birth, exploring its people and places, its legends and lore through songs set in the liminal spaces where the real world and magical realms collide.
But with the 2023 collection “I Inside the Old Year Dying,” her 10th studio album, Polly Jean Harvey went home in ways far beyond and deeper than any other artist might attempt.
The record, which brought Harvey to the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on Monday, Oct. 14, was inspired by her 2022 novel-in-verse “Orlam,” a book that tells the story of the 9-year-old girl Ira-Abel, who, like Harvey, is a child of Dorset in England’s West Country, walking through field and forest both tranquil and temperamental.
Inside the Gore Woods, a kind of parallel world, Ira is protected by Orlam, an omniscient lamb’s eyeball. As she wanders, she encounters all manner of creatures including Wyman-Elvis, a sort of holy soldier-ghost, who spreads the Word of Love Me Tender.
Add to that, the novel and the album are written in the Dorset dialect which hasn’t been used much since Thomas Hardy set “Tess of the D’Urbervilles” and “Jude the Obscure” a-walking the hills, valleys and meadows of West Sussex, his fictionalized version of the Dorset of his birth.
Granted, that’s a lot, and in lesser hands, it might have landed like a ’70s prog rocker’s adaptation of “The Hobbit,” a high concept, fallen low. But at the Greek on Monday, all this unfolded as magnetic and mesmerizing as a midsummer night’s dream, as Harvey and her band performed all 12 songs on “I Inside the Old Year Dying” to open the show before segueing into a second career-spanning set of many of her most beloved songs.
‘Prayer at the Gate” opened the show with a slow, moody melody, Harvey singing while almost acting out the feeling of the song, her arms entwined around her head, gazing up into a single moon-like spotlight above her. “Autumn Term” followed, and as the stage lights brightened, Harvey appeared in what looked like flowing white vestments with images of dark tree branches on them.
Sound effects accented most songs. Night birds sang as “Lwonsome Tonight” began, its lyrics referencing Ira’s journey through the words as Harvey sang, “Are you Elvis, are you God? / Jesus sent to win my trust?” and then, “‘Love me tender’ are his words / as I’ve loved you, so you must.”
For this, Harvey’s first U.S. tour in seven years, she was accompanied by longtime collaborator John Parish on guitars, drummer Jean-Marc Butty, who has played with her for 15 years, multi-instrumentalist James Johnston, and bassist Giovanni Ferrario. For the first five songs of the night, Harvey only sang, leaving the instruments she’d later play – various guitars, an autoharp – untouched. Behind her, the band established an almost medieval sound of strings and percussion over a keyboard’s low electronic burble.
Birdsong returned at the start of “A Child’s Question, August,” its lyrics – “Starling swarms will soon be lorn / Rooks tell stories across the corn” – using the natural world to explore the final days of summer. Cathedral bells chimed as “I Inside the Old I Dying” began, a sign of the Christianity meets pagan holiness of the lyrics to come.
By the final song on the album, “The Noiseless Noise,” the volume and tempo of the songs had increased closer to the rock and roll of Harvey’s earlier albums, the arc of the journey at its climax.
Then after a slight change of costume during which the four men of the band played the instrumental “The Colour of the Earth,” Harvey returned to the stage for a pair of songs, “The Glorious Land” and “The Words That Maketh Murder” from her 2011 album “Let England Shake.”
Slowly, the dream of the first half of the night lifted, as more familiar songs arrived. “50ft Queenie” from her 1992 debut “Dry,” drew the crowd to its feet at the first blast of Harvey’s grungy blues guitar riffs. “Black-Hearted Love,” from her 2009 duo album with Parish, delivered an even bigger rock and roll jolt of energy, Harvey singing as she pranced around the stage.
For “The Desperate Kingdom of Love” she performed alone with acoustic guitar, singing beautifully as the band watched from chairs on stage. “Man-Size,” another “Dry” track, brought fans back to their feet, where they stayed through the final songs of the main set, a run that included such favorites as “Down By the Water” and “To Bring You My Love.”
The Greek show was the final night of her North American tour, Harvey noted as she thanked the audience and introduced the band. For its encore, the only part of her sets to change most nights, she returned for a terrific take on “C’mon Billy,” with Parish on acoustic guitar.
“White Chalk,” the title track of her 2007 album, brought things full circle back to Dorset. “White chalk hills are all I’ve known / white chalk hills will rot my bones,” she sang of the cliffs for which Dorset is known. Like the new album, like many of her songs before it, the magic of her home, her heart was made real again.
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