On “To Bring You My Love”, PJ Harvey uses American blues to explore the supernatural in search of a human connection. Broken relationships are not new to songwriting, but Harvey reaches for an even older tradition in traversing the boundary between earth and its ghosts.
Her love song is haunting and heavy and builds slowly using a lurching guitar riff. Using the language of gospel and blues, with the noise and spirit of punk, “To Bring You My Love” describes how the unbearable becomes bearable. Having felt the pain of lost love, Harvey commits to a baptism of fire to carry love over endless obstacles.
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About “To Bring You My Love”
Harvey said she created “To Bring You My Love” based on “atmosphere” and “feeling.” The title track of her third studio album exposes conflict and survival within her invented world. The things one bears just to reach the next moment in their life.
And I’ve traveled over
Dry earth and floods
Hell and high water
To bring you my love.
She uses biblical language to explain the difficult path she’s traveled. Her experience suggests she’s willing to endure hard times to keep the relationship intact. Additionally, the supernatural metaphors lend Harvey’s punk blues a mystical quality, following a tradition that has inspired artists like Elvis Presley and Nick Cave.
Climbed over mountains
Traveled the sea
Cast out of Heaven
Cast down on my knees.
Going It Alone
To Bring You My Love marks Harvey’s first proper solo album. She had recorded Dry and Rid Of Me with her trio, featuring drummer Rob Ellis and bassist Steve Vaughan. But this new chapter finds Harvey beginning her lauded work with producers Flood and John Parish.
Following the raw grunge of Rid Of Me, recorded by Steve Albini, Harvey moved to rural England and wrote in isolation. She imagined an emotional reality and explored the shadowy corners of the human condition, like someone transformed (or possessed) by desire. But instead of the boundaries of the physical state, Harvey searched the metaphysical.
This isn’t Robert Johnson selling his soul at the crossroads. Harvey sounds so darkly possessed, it’s like she’s wrestled back control of her soul from the devil. Its recaptured and murky condition creates a kind of superpower—someone with nothing to lose.
“To Bring You My Love” isn’t Harvey’s plea for love. This is just how it’s going to be.
The spirit might be an essence or a principle. But one hardened by the harsh winds of experience and rejection. What Harvey is singing about is the messy, complex nature of things. It’s everything that it means to be truly human.
Photo by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images
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