PJ Harvey is Poetry

Last night I saw PJ Harvey at the Orpheum. Our seats were way up high, and I kept thinking I was at the Wiltern. Elated at the thought of being out on a school night, I dank vodka with about a baby-dropper's worth of cranberry juice. You can guess how that went- I sobbed through her piano set and clapped a beat to her electric set. My poor row-mates. The stage was like a person's living room: two chairs with furry throws, christmas lights on the upright piano and the two amps. Nothing else, and no one else except Ian, a long haired guy from England (long haired guy from the United Kingdom) who would hand her guitar or collect it from her. Polly, who is an emaciated woman, wore a Gibson Girl-sleeved white gown with giant cursive either stitched or painted on-it was hard to tell from our seats and my inebriated state. I couldn't see her hairdo well, but Danita said it wasn't cute, which I forgive. I like my guitar-heroines stylishly disheviled.

Funny, in all those years of rockin' out to her, I never realized how beautiful her voice actually is behind all the fuzz and feedback and screeching. Here, with only a piano to frame hr voice, she sounded...ethereal. She made me feel the way Tori Amos used to make me feel during her "just me and my piano" days, the days of Sister Janet and Honey. She made me feel like darkeness is beautiful, and magic completely possible.

P.S.
I came to work hung over ;)