The Roundhouse, London, September 28
POLLY Harvey walks on stage into a set which responds beautifully to light. At times it can seem like a wall of flaking plaster in a neglected urban space, at others a leaf skeleton. With dramatic underlighting it can resemble a bat colony, photographed in mid-flight. The immediate impression, though, is of branches – the better, perhaps, to establish her in a new context, queen of rural rock.
That, anyway, is the effect. Harvey herself emerges in the white dress she wears on the back cover. This was the ghostly giant of an album that reconnected her with the Dorset soil after 15 years in the MTV buzzbin, and with a drama closer to home. The echo doesn’t seem accidental.
