Often with the artists who were making statements before we were even embryos, we uncover their discography in odd and sporadic ways. We don’t hear their first song, go to their early gigs or even have to go out and buy a full album - thanks spotify. The first time I comprehended PJ Harvey’s artistry was on a car journey as a twelve-year-old kid, probably still dressed head-to-toe in Roxy, slapping the car seats and shouting the lyrics to Sheela-na-gig down the M1. At the time I was still disturbed by some of what PJ says, e.g. ‘"wash your breasts, I don’t want to be unclean” he said “please take your dirty pillows away from me”’. Clearly, however, the song is about men’s demands of the female body/female entrapment/slut-shaming. Thus, it was not only this hella cool woman, who could do glam when she wanted and write her own songs whilst playing a variety of instruments that originally caught my attention as a kid with a active hatred of the mainstream, it was Harvey’s incredibly intelligent and relevant lyrics.See Harvey playing 'Sheela na gig' @ Reading in 1992: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkS_R7RDuMc
Enter, ‘The Wheel’, the first song to be released from Harvey’s ninth album ‘The Hope Six Demolition Project’. Even the lyrics are heavily embedded with the political - ‘a tableau of the missing tied to the government building 8,000 sun-bleached photographs faded with the roses’. The song fixates on the atrocities surrounding the year long Kosovo war in the late nineties. In the video, which is a piece of art in itself with flicking images of people rebuilding their community, Harvey visit’s Kosovo, still stained with the marks of war nearly twenty years on. At the centre of the action, is an abandoned wheel, a children’s ride with rusting swinging chairs which inspired Harvey to write the song. Yet Kosovo, seemingly stuck in a time capsule with images of Bill Clinton and Elvis still overlooking the derelict city, is a striking comparison to other events which are happening right now. Images of people who suffered the war, the ethnic cleansing and had to abandon there own homes are in tune with the refugees fleeing from Syria for the past few years, on one hand from the brutality of their own President Al-Assad’s chemical airstikes and ISIL on the other.
Harvey isn’t the only artist who has referenced the refugee crisis lately. Take, MIA’s ‘borders’ as another example. Yet Harvey, always exceeding herself by challenging her own capacity for creativity, manages to make a subtler and more thought-provoking statement in ‘The Wheel’. There are no actors climbing walls clad in rags in the video, and no obvious lyrics telling listeners right from wrong, instead we are faced with the dismay that war can cause years after the rest of the world has forgotten about its occurrence.
On top of this, ‘The Wheel’ is a really good song and it’s brilliant to see an artist survive into their third decade of fame without falling into the trap of self-indulgence and making crap music. Also, the constant slap-clapping not only makes the song extremely catchy but reminds me of the first time I enjoyed Harvey, all those years ago.
Watch the music video to 'The Wheel': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ReW0jJkag8
