Is This Desire?
PJ Harvey
Label: Island, September 1998
Length: 12 tracks
It might be easier for people to introduce themselves to the work of PJ Harvey by hearing her fourth record, Is This Desire?, first. Many get scared off by the searing sound of “Dry,” “Rid of Me,” “Four Track Demos,” and “To Bring You My Love.” Harvey is one of a kind. More self-assured than Patti Smith, more honest and shocking than Liz Phair and Courtney Love, and I challenge you to find a female vocalist more willing to share her feelings despite the consequences. She’s not a sensationalist or a poser; she’s real, and that’s why she’s scary.
On this record, Harvey decides to stop being scary herself and instead give us something of a breather by pointing to other scary characters around her. (Not a bad idea. Christ himself saw the value in abandoning straight lecture and saying, “Let me tell you some stories.”) The stories inspire contemplation. But they’re also very puzzling. This album is appropriately titled with a question mark.
And the question seems to officially introduce a new theme to her work. PJ’s usual theme is simple: she demands R-E-S-P-E-C-T--from men, from women, and from God. These characters, however, demand something more than respect. (PJ carefully avoids making this an “I-am-woman-and-I-never-get-a-break” record. Men and women are given almost equal time. In fact, Christ himself may be walking in “The Garden,” yearning for a cup different than the one he is given to drink.) These characters demand satisfaction for their various longings, all of which stem from an innate fundamental longing, and they are devastated by its elusiveness.
In “A Pefect Day Elise,” the album’s champion track, she tells about
a man “who got lucky one time/ hittin’ with the girl in Room 509.”
After an afternoon’s lovemaking, in which his eyes are opened to the transcendent
glories of intimacy, he is cast out. Not just out of her room, but
out of intimacy... forever. He will never find the same heights of
joy and transcendence as he did in the girl’s bed. Perhaps years
later, we’re not sure, he returns to the room and stares out the window
at the same beautiful view, his mind imprisoned in that memory of stolen
passion. The possibility of an experience as beautiful as that connection
now haunts him, and his loneliness is worsened by his
knowledge.
But it is the women of the record that make the strongest marks. In “Catherine,” Catherine is a woman so beautiful that the singer cannot find a moment’s peace while someone else enjoys Catherine’s love. (The singer’s sex is ambiguous. PJ’s voice is slowed down to frightening, strangely masculine effect.) Another nameless woman is so terribly beautiful “under electric light” that the singer says to look upon her tears his(?) heart out. Desire is a devil on this record, ever-seeking who it may devour, tormenting those who recognize beauty and cannot reach it.
The longing and anger is given a chainsaw edge by the characteristic PJ Harvey guitar chords, but there are a lot of new sounds to discover along the way. PJ tinkers with her music to fit the spooky stories she has to tell. After four records of pushing her electric-guitar trio to the edges of searing noise, she seems now exhilarated by the freedom electronic music gives her. (She co-produced the album with Flood, who transformed U2 into an electronics powerhouse with “Zooropa.”) Vocally, she dons a shocking array of personas: Shrieking banshee. Howling wind. Sultry beat poet. Frail prostitute yearning for a salvation that seems “two thousand miles away.”
In “The Wind,” a lonely woman (also named Catherine) moves to an isolated hilltop where she can rest and make “noises like the whales,” the music cooperates, and the eerie whale-cries and winds that envelop the scene pulls the listener above the clouds to that beautiful and desolate place. (Is this lonely Catherine who has been so hurt as to run from the world the same Catherine who is so desired by the desperate singer of “Catherine?" Could it be a reference to the Catherine of Wuthering Heights, or another Catherine of literature?)
The new sounds cast appropriately dark enchantments; but the guitars are still the backbone, buzzing and thundering so we experience something of the urgency of these lost souls. It sounds like a world where time is running out.
As I listened to the album over and over, addicted to its contagious rhythms and subtle undercurrents, haunted by its stories, I began to wonder, "Is there an answer offered to the question of the title? Does PJ believe desire is a hopeless compulsion that brings only pain?" I thought of U2 singing that, although they have found salvation in Christ Jesus, they “still haven’t found what [they’re] looking for.” In the last song, the title cut, the question is spoken outright, by a couple who sees their love’s first flush fading, “Is this desire enough to lift us higher...?”
And perhaps we should not expect an answer. How could we?
Those who understand the sufferings of Christ are those who know that love
makes one a stranger in a strange land. If we aspire to dwell in
heaven, to love faithfully, this world becomes something of a hell.
Most of these characters are doomed never to find the heaven they desire
because they place their hopes in frail human objects. But there
are signs PJ Harvey suspects a higher plane of love. In “The River,”
the closest thing to a ballad she’s ever written, she describes a couple
walking along a river bank, casting their sufferings into the water, finding
some kind of grace in the way sunlight scatters on the water, like a whisper
from God. This is a place where love transcends sex and romantic
passion.
One hopes it is a resolution for the troubled couple of the title
track.
Overall, Harvey’s concocted a dangerous brew that opens our eyes to things we might not want to see, but which are true nonetheless. Love is a risky journey, fraught with perils, and more often than not leads to disappointment. Jesus especially knows this heartbreak, and that might well be Christ himself in “The Garden,” who is greeted by a close friend with a kiss. PJ freeze-frames the moment, turns to us, murmuring, “and there was trouble taking place.”
By Jeffrey Overstreet
Jeffrey Overstreet writes regular reviews, news, and
essays on the arts and Christian perspectives at the Green
Lake Reflections web page and in The Crossing, a magazine for
Christian artists. He has been published in Christianity and the
Arts Magazine, The New Christian Herald, and AngliCan Arts
Magazine, and he is a founding member of Promontory Artists Association.
You can contact Jeffrey at Promontory@aol.com. (1/17/99)
