Gig review: PJ Harvey and John Parish

Published on Monday 27 April 2009 19:58

**** QUEEN'S HALL, EDINBURGH

WHAT does a girl have to do to get a dance partner in this city? PJ Harvey has leapt off the stage and is jigging along merrily to a groovy breakdown from the band, but the audience is collectively too awestruck to do anything but gawp. It's the revered Polly, in her bare feet, right there among us, running on the spot, in an old church.

Returning to the stage, she gently chided us for our timidity – though there was nothing timid about the rapturous response to this show with her long-time musical mentor John Parish. While the front rows cursed their bashfulness, Harvey raised the possibility of a second chance to commune with her: "I'd love to do a residency here."

So she loved the venue, and the venue loved her. But then, she is an extraordinarily malleable stage presence – slight and skinny at rest, demure and polite as she thanked the audience, then huge and declamatory, or haunted and vulnerable, or unhinged and possessed, depending on what the song required.

While most eyes were on Harvey, it was Parish and band, including former Beefheart associate Eric Drew Feldman, who helped shape her brilliant delivery with a gripping, dynamic soundtrack, setting the scene for Sixteen, Fifteen, Fourteen with banjo, toms and handclaps; supporting her (deliberately) frail falsetto on The Soldier with ukulele and melodica; and kicking off the blues punk of Pig Will Not.

There were so many sonic strands deserving of further exploration – from the unearthly Leaving California to the relatively conventional but thoroughly beautiful Passionless, Pointless – that Harvey really should consider that residency. And, next time, we promise to dance with her.