The stage for PJ Harvey’s first tour since 2017 is set like a domestic interior. The exact decade may be hazy, but this is a musical home, with analogue electronics scattered around the distressed wooden furniture, a fiddle offsetting the guitars. On a wooden table sit a jug of water and glasses.
An earthenware vase holds a single thin branch, echoing the cover image of PJ Harvey’s latest album, I Inside The Old Year Dying, where a gnarled twig – and especially its shadow – foretell of uncanny goings-on in the woods. Her four-strong band wear faded tones; Harvey is all in oat, her Shaker-evening-chic dress fitted with a discreet pocket for a mic pack. Throughout the nearly two-hour set, she and her multi-instrumentalists use every bit of the stage like dramatis personae, with halogen-dominant lighting, warped birdsong and found sounds adding to the feel of witnessing a stage play out of time – how I Inside The Old Year Dying was once envisaged, before the songs took on a life of their own.
