PJ Harvey could possibly be seen as an inventor. An incredibly beautiful one though, without the fuzzy hair, thick bottled specs and the lipstick wearing chimp. Her sixth ‘proper’ album Uh Huh Her, once again divides fine line opinion between genius inventor, and mad old schizo spinster inventor. Her previous two efforts, the multi layered ‘Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea’ and the experimentally sampling of ‘Is This Desire?’ divided opinion in many attention seeking music magazines. ‘Stories….’ Won the Mercury Music prize even though lyrically inept compared to her previous releases, and ‘Is This Desire?’ was slammed as being too ‘harsh’ even though it was lyrically stunning and is by far her best album. She isn’t one for lacking imagination you could say and deserves so much more praise than anything The Strokes, White Stripes or fucking Jet get.

It’s a tough venue. The sound at times is terrible but the support act/guy is so appalling you thank the lord you can’t hear him anyway. The eclectic crowd of just finished work suited yuppie arseholes, feminists, lesbians and gay guys, and, well, me, wait patiently through streams of feedback, pleading for her to appear on stage. Two hours later at around 9.45pm she enters the beautiful open aired concert arena looking like the most stunning woman ever created from single celled organism. She must be only about 5 feet tall with pink heels and a belt for a skirt but she still manages to strut around the stage like a diarrea-ridden alley cat. That’s a good thing by the way. The new album is full of great songs that sound so much better tonight than they do on record. The gay guys and the feminists dilute each other and a really tall prat tries to spoil my view, so I kill him with a pitchfork. Seriously, I killed him. Older songs from ‘Dry’ including ‘Dress’ ‘Victory’ were meet with an atomistic response but you kind of got the feeling everybody was here for the newer stuff. ‘Who the Fuck?’ sounded like Kim Gordon cutting her old veiny wrists, ‘Shame’ sounded a little like prick head Sting backed with great two drummers and ‘The Pocket Knife’ cut (nice pun) by little girl like vocals left many feminists reaching for their A to Z of ‘How to be a Strong Woman.’ My personal favourite ‘Catherine’ was even played from ‘Is this Desire?’ and reaffirmed my faith in lyrical genius crossing over to the audience. She was stunning. It’s true that nothing off ‘Rid of Me’ was played and the encore was a bit of an anti-climax, but aren’t most encores? I sat through TWO encores watching Radiohead, and was so dehydrated I was pissing snot for a week. True story.

Matt Gilbert