Polly Jean Harvey has had many musical personas. The English singer-songwriter has assaulted the world as a raging punk, howled from the mountaintops like an angry blues man, torn out her heart as a torch singer. She has retreated into whispered contemplation and celebrated romance from the rooftops. These guises all reflect her artistic mandate to keep pushing forward.
"I think of myself more as an explorer than as a maker of pop music," PJ Harvey, 38, said while she was in town last week to play a sold-out show at the Orpheum Theatre supporting "White Chalk," her latest album. "I don't want to stick to any one plan."
Thoughtful and upbeat during a conversation over tea at a West Hollywood hotel, the alt-rock icon was dressed mostly in black, her dark, chaotic swirl of curls resembling her onstage coif from two nights earlier. Perfectly mascaraed lashes framed hazel eyes that fixed you with an almost frighteningly intelligent gaze.
The glowing reviews for "White Chalk" often peg it as a departure from previous works. She wrote it, not on guitar as usual, but on piano and other instruments heard on the album, such as zither, harmonica and harp. Longtime pals Eric Drew Feldman and Jim White of the Dirty Three augmented the mostly hushed, atmospheric tracks with Mellotron, delicate percussion, guitar and banjo. The recording's closest relative is 1998's "Is This Desire?" -- also co-produced by Harvey, Flood and John Parish -- but "White Chalk" is even more ethereal.
The album still draws from the ancient forms that have always interested Harvey, this time more folk than blues. She sings in a high, wispy soprano that's a far cry from the full-throated power of such highlights as 1995's "To Bring You My Love," 2000's "Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea," and her previous release, 2004's "Uh Huh Her."
The Orpheum show (one of only two U.S. dates) represented another departure: She performed solo rather than in her usual rock-band configuration. It was different and exciting for her. Also, although she loves playing live, she doesn't want to actually tour.
"I thought it would suit me to do about one show a month," she said, "and the only way you can make that work is to be playing on your own."
Concert presentation is key for Harvey, whose stage attire has varied from a crimson evening gown to dresses fashioned from her own promotional T-shirts. "How I'm looking [on stage] is how I want to feel, to convey the songs," she said. "And it always comes back to what the music suggests in the first place." At the Orpheum her flowing white gown scrawled with lyrics evoked the internal drama of these bare new songs.
