PJ HARVEY: DIGESTING DESIRE

Live @ BCEC, Brisbane 2025.

Dissonant charm follows PJ through her stage presence and performance. Every twist and turn leads somewhere new and intentional. Her natural cadence demands the attention of everyone in the room, ethereal and present. A flawless vocal performance that has floored me for the foresable future.

I didn’t crack the PJ Harvey discography until I was about 21. I was familiar with the Nick Cave history, I was aware of the indie iconography, but it wasn’t my time or place to get it yet. It wasn’t until I was in a personal purgatory that this inner hunger and desire was gnawing at me from the inside, shredding my organs and desperately trying to break the skin. I was reconnecting with heavier music from my teenage years, still, I had an emerging NEED to balance the duality of anger and violence, with something -equally as deep - but delicate and bleeding in other ways. Wielding two swords for the same beast - I spent my days re-tracing the steps of my teenage ipod, and my nights perilously churning over desire and experiencing the musings of PJ Harvey truly for the first, proper* time. PJ’s 1998 Record ‘Is This Desire?’ & its final track of the same name - was the catharsis I needed to help navigate my purgatory.

Is This Desire? Was like discovering a map and mirror….Reflecting my turmoil yet revealing a roadway or path out. I was coming to discover that desire wasn’t a one-track ‘yearning’ but a paradox - something that could/can/would make or break me. It seemed to hold the ability to empower and unmake me simultaneously. I don’t think there is a roadmap for desire when you’re a woman in this world. It presents itself to you tangled and contradictory… do you: submit to it, embody it or cultivate restraint against it… ? Desire feels like an agonising wound, a gentle whisper or a consuming, craving relentless curse. ‘Coming to grips’ with longing, this record !did! save a part of my sanity. Is This Desire? felt like standing at the edge of something vast, peering into the dark, uncertain of whether to step forward or turn away. It wasn’t a celebration of desire, nor was it a warning. It was a question—one that women are rarely given the space to ask. Is this hunger mine to own? Or is it something that will swallow me whole?

I was blessed to have photographed PJ Harvey in Brisbane, thank you Supersonic Billions, Val & PJ Harvey for having me in your company on March 15th, 2025.

Beautiful blue lights appear on the stage as the house lights finally start to dim, PJ appears whisking along the stage to ‘prayer at the gates’. There’s a magnetic quality to her as her voice weaves an undeniable invisible string, gently yanking everyone in, energy filling between the stage and the audience - we are inside her bubble, and it’s all-electric light. As the stage lights morphed with each song, the glowing cracking backdrop shifting, color tones progressed akin to PJ’s voice as her persona grew and shapeshifted… I fell deeper into her world.

Watching a PJ Harvey show is a journey. From her vast and mystical discography, each song is a story, and each story, its own element, energy - mood. She’s like the ocean rolling back and forward, drifting then pulling into a crashing wave. The way her set ebbs and flows is utterly unique and passionate like it could manipulate time and make it stand still - in her bubble. I think she was on stage for 2 hours? She walked on at 8:30 and everything after that fell away from my consciousness…I was really just enamored and firmly in her surroundings.

The Brisbane Setlist