PJ Harvey played MGM Music Hall – 9/18

Singer, songwriter and all-around auteur PJ Harvey enthralled MGM last week as part of her first U.S. tour in seven years.

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In the course of her storied three-decade career, the mercurial Polly Jean Harvey has rarely done things as expected. Project-to-project, she’s long reveled in left turns and evolution, from howling punk blues to charging alt-rock and haunted chamber folk. 2023’s I Inside the Old Year Dying – based on Harvey’s own epic poem “Orlam” – finds her once again charting new ground within its atmospheric storytelling framework. And true to form, she’s doing something surprising with its supporting tour, too: performing the whole thing front-to-back to open each show.

That’s a bold move for any veteran artist, let alone one with as many beloved records and as sparse a touring schedule as Harvey, but the reverent crowd at Wednesday’s MGM show seemed happy to follow wherever she chose to lead. With the aid of her ace backing band, including longtime collaborator John Parish, Harvey conducted a theatrical run through the new record in a prompt, no-opener, evening-with format. I did regrettably have to miss a chunk of the show’s first part, thanks to Post Malone across the street, but the record’s side two impressed with a combination of choreography, lighting and dynamic sound that helped bring material which has remained a tad distant for me in its recorded form to life.

Harvey briefly departed the stage to rapturous applause at the conclusion of “A Noiseless Noise,” leaving the band on stage to tackle Let England Shake‘s “The Colour of the Earth” on their own before the full ensemble reunited for “The Glorious Land” and “The Words That Maketh Murder.” Segueing into the show’s ostensibly more crowd-pleasing second half with a trio of harrowing songs about the bloody, devastating costs of warfare? Also pretty bold. But again, very PJ Harvey.

For the remainder of the night, it was a trip through an esteemed back catalog, dipping all the way back to Harvey’s ’92 debut Dry. 1995’s To Bring You My Love received the most nods, with the sinuous “Down By the Water” and blues-y tension of its title track drawing that second set to a spellbinding conclusion. A taut, electric “Man-Size” contrasted back to back with an acoustic “Desperate Kingdom of Love,” and White Chalk‘s eerie title track did the same against a spirited “C’Mon Billy” to make up the encore. All the while, Harvey continued to channel the drama and theater of the show’s first act into its second, a stage presence simultaneously spectral and commanding.

I’ll take a brief opportunity here to lament that my personal favorite PJ LP, 2004’s Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, has continued to remain more or less absent from stateside setlists approximately since 2004 (though NYC did get “Horses in My Dreams” the previous night). But in reflecting on the seven years since we last saw Harvey around these parts, I’m also reminded that no matter what she chooses to play, it’s a privilege to witness.

Again, very regrettably, I did wind up missing my first three songs in the pit on this particular night, but I burned through a roll of black-and-white with my pocket rangefinder (the somewhat-astonishingly capable Kodak Retina IIIc) to capture a little bit of the evening’s ethereal vibe. See some of those above and below.