PJ Harvey
Issue #28
PJ Harvey On Tour — Please Leave Quietly (Island)
By Elizabeth Rhodes
Published: June 1st, 2006 | 8:00am
There are times when PJ Harvey groans, moans, and shrieks so wildly that it almost makes you wince. The best music is an irritant — it gets under your skin — and Harvey’s gritty punk-meets-blues is especially radiant with primal fury, despair, and desire when performed live. That radiance is finally documented in the film PJ Harvey On Tour — Please Leave Quietly.
Directed by Maria Mochnacz, the tour documentary frames concert footage with backstage segments and fuzzy audio-visual montages. The film follows Harvey in her hot-pink high heels with her three-piece band through summer festivals, a U.K. and European tour, and U.S. appearances in support of her seventh album, 2004’s Uh Huh Her.
Instead of taking the usual tour-documentary approach and dwelling on individual concerts or behind-the-scenes debauchery, the film emphasizes the disorienting feeling of being in a new city every night. “I find being on tour destabilizing and this is what I wanted people to feel and see,” Harvey recently wrote on her Web site. Mochnacz’s direction contributes to this uneasy tone; the shot is often out of focus and flashes from venue to venue. It can be distracting and even tedious — there’s a lengthy close-up of rain falling on a windshield — but the film fits Harvey’s raw, four-track demo style.
The disc features 16 career-spanning songs, including two previously unreleased tracks in the Uh Huh Her vein, “Uh Huh Her” and “Evol.” Although Harvey’s later material dominates and there’s sadly nothing from Rid of Me, the film effectively chronicles Harvey’s growing musical maturity and bipolar swings from lush to ragged. “Down By The Water” sounds slightly tired and routine, but “Big Exit” and others roar with fresh attitude. Harvey stomps around the stage in her torn Spice Girls dress, commanding the packed house in front of her.
The eccentricity of Harvey’s music stays with her during the 28-minute bonus interview, but her dominating persona and sexuality are replaced with a gentle woman from Dorset, England. Although she doesn’t tell viewers who “Who the Fuck?” is about nor does she cry or provide gossip fodder about former lovers, she is self-analytical and relatively open.
“If I had to put in order of preference writing, recording, or performing, without a shadow of a doubt, I would say performing because that’s where the music makes sense,” Harvey says. “I like that it’s moving in time and you can’t nail it down.” Please Leave Quietly demonstrates Harvey’s love and talent for performing and ultimately succeeds at capturing her life on the road.
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