As The Sky Is Darkening

PJ Harvey “The Ministry of Social Affairs”

I’ve seen PJ Harvey perform twice in my life. The first was an opening act gig for U2 in 2001, and I barely remember anything about it. The second was a solo performance at the Beacon Theater in 2007, and it was one of the most powerful and impressive shows I’ve ever witnessed. A lot of what made that show so captivating was being confronted with Harvey’s full range as a singer, as she performed songs from all the periods of her career up through White Chalk and approaching them with very different vocal techniques. I had always acknowledged that she had a great voice, but up until that point I thought of her mainly as someone who wrote excellent songs. But from then on, it was clear to me that she had a rare gift as a singer, something like being a chameleonic actor. She writes a song, and fully inhabits it. The songs ask her to be different people, and she obliges.

The past few PJ Harvey records have leaned mostly on the high register of her voice, which has been interesting and suitable for the material, but vaguely disappointing in that I think she’s at her best when she’s more connected to the blues and early rock traditions. She’s come back around to that on The Hope Six Demolition Project, and it invests the songs with a level of passion and sense of high stakes that the more fragile or academic songs of Let England Shake and White Chalk lacked. The songs on this record are about desperate people and desperate situations, and so she sings like there’s something to lose. “The Ministry of Social Affairs” is a rock ballad literally built around an old blues song by Jerry McCain, and shambles along while she belts out lyrics about the people who knowingly profit off other people’s suffering. The whole record is about the oppressive institutions that crush the lives of the poor, and this song is essentially the climax of it all, and she just sounds defeated and exasperated. The music isn’t devoid of hope, but it’s bitter and frustrated in acknowledging that the house always wins.

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