Automatic Dlamini: 1988–1991 In July 1988, Harvey became a member of Automatic Dlamini, a band based in
Bristol with whom she gained extensive ensemble-playing experience. Formed by
John Parish in 1983, the band consisted of a rotating line-up that at various times included
Rob Ellis and Ian Oliver. Harvey had met Parish in 1987 through mutual friend Jeremy Hogg, the band's slide guitarist. Providing saxophone, guitars and backing vocals, she travelled extensively during the band's early days, including performances in
East and
West Germany, Spain and Poland to support the band's debut studio album,
The D is for Drum. Parish would subsequently contribute to, and sometimes co-produce, Harvey's solo studio albums and has toured with her several times. As a duo, Parish and Harvey have recorded two collaborative albums where Parish composed the music and Harvey wrote the lyrics. Parish's girlfriend in the late 1980s was photographer
Maria Mochnacz. She and Harvey became close friends and Mochnacz went on to shoot and design most of Harvey's album artwork and music videos, contributing significantly to her public image. Harvey said of her time with Automatic Dlamini: "I ended up not singing very much but I was just happy to learn how to play the guitar. I wrote a lot during the time I was with them but my first songs were crap. I was listening to a lot of
Irish folk music at the time, so the songs were
folky and full of penny whistles and stuff. It was ages before I felt ready to perform my own songs in front of other people." She also credits Parish for teaching her how to perform in front of audiences, saying "after the experience with John's band and seeing him perform I found it was enormously helpful to me as a performer to engage with people in the audience, and I probably did learn that from him, amongst other things." Harvey wrote to the American rock band
Slint after they printed a request for female singers on the sleeve of their 1991 album
Spiderland, but Slint broke up before the album was released.
PJ Harvey Trio; Dry and Rid of Me: 1991–1994 Harvey decided to name her new band the PJ Harvey Trio, rejecting other names as "nothing felt right at all or just suggested the wrong type of sound", and also to allow her to continue music as a solo artist. The trio consisted of Harvey on vocals and guitar, Ellis on drums and backing vocals, and Oliver on bass. Oliver later departed to rejoin the still-active Automatic Dlamini. He was subsequently replaced with Steve Vaughan. The trio's "disastrous" debut performance was held at a
skittle alley in
Charmouth Village Hall in April 1991. Harvey later recounted the event saying: "we started playing and I suppose there was about fifty people there, and during the first song we cleared the hall. There was only about two people left. And a woman came up to us, came up to my drummer, it was only a three piece, while we were playing and shouted at him 'Don't you realise nobody likes you! We'll pay you, you can stop playing, we'll still pay you! The group relocated to London in June 1991 when Harvey applied to study sculpture, still undecided as to her future career. However, Too Pure provided little promotion for the single and critics claim that "
Melody Maker had more to do with the success of the 'Dress' single than Too Pure Records." A week after its release, the band recorded a live radio session for Peel on
BBC Radio 1 on 29 October featuring "Oh, My Lover", "Victory", "
Sheela-Na-Gig" and "Water". The following February, the trio released "Sheela-Na-Gig" as their equally-acclaimed second single and their debut studio album,
Dry (1992), followed in March. Like the singles preceding it,
Dry received an overwhelming international critical response. The album was cited by
Kurt Cobain of
Nirvana as his sixteenth-favourite album ever in his posthumously published
Journals (2002).
Rolling Stone also named Harvey as Songwriter of the Year and Best New Female Singer. A limited edition double LP version of
Dry was released alongside the regular version of the album, containing both the original and demo versions of each track, called
Dry Demonstration, and the band also received significant coverage at the
Reading Festival in 1992.
Island (PolyGram) signed the trio amid a major label bidding war in mid-1992, and in December 1992 the trio travelled to
Cannon Falls, Minnesota, in the United States to record the follow-up to
Dry with producer
Steve Albini. Prior to recording with Albini, the band recorded a second session with John Peel on 22 September and recorded a version of
Bob Dylan's "
Highway 61 Revisited", and two new songs "Me Jane" and "Ecstasy". The recording sessions with Albini took place at
Pachyderm Recording Studio and resulted in the band's major label debut
Rid of Me in May 1993.
Rolling Stone wrote that it "is charged with aggressive eroticism and rock fury. It careens from
blues to
goth to
grunge, often in the space of a single song." The album was promoted by two singles, "
50ft Queenie" and "Man-Size", as well as tours of the United Kingdom in May and of the United States in June, continuing there during the summer. However, during the American leg of the tour, internal friction started to form between the members of the trio. Deborah Frost, writing for
Rolling Stone, noticed "an ever widening personal gulf" between the band members, and quoted Harvey as saying "It makes me sad. I wouldn't have got here without them. I needed them back then – badly. But I don't need them anymore. We all changed as people." Despite the tour's personal downsides, footage from live performances was compiled and released on the long-form video
Reeling with PJ Harvey (1993). The band's final tour was to support the Irish rock band
U2 in August 1993, after which the trio officially disbanded. In her final appearance on American television in September 1993 on
The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Harvey performed a solo version of "Rid of Me". As
Rid of Me sold substantially more copies than
Dry,
4-Track Demos, a compilation album of demos for the album was released in October and inaugurated her career as a solo artist. In early 1994, it was announced that U2's manager,
Paul McGuinness, had become her manager. A blues-influenced and futuristic record,
To Bring You My Love included strings, organs and synthesisers.
Rolling Stone said in its review that "Harvey sings the blues like
Nick Cave sings gospel: with more distortion, sex and murder than you remember.
To Bring You My Love was a towering goth version of grunge." , Germany, 1998 The record generated a surprise
modern rock radio hit in the United States with its lead single, "
Down by the Water". The music video received heavy rotation on MTV and became Harvey's most recognizable song. Three consecutive singles—"
C'mon Billy", "Send His Love to Me" and "Long Snake Moan"—were also moderately successful. The album sold one million copies worldwide including 370,000 in the United States. It was also certified Silver in the United Kingdom within seven months of its release, having sold over 60,000 copies. In the US, the album was voted Album of the Year by
The Village Voice,
Rolling Stone,
USA Today,
People,
The New York Times and the
Los Angeles Times.
Rolling Stone also named Harvey 1995's Artist of the Year and
Spin ranked the album third in The 90 Greatest Albums of the 1990s, behind
Nirvana's
Nevermind (1991) and
Public Enemy's
Fear of a Black Planet (1990). The material introduced
electronica elements into her work. During recording sessions in 1997 original PJ Harvey Trio drummer Rob Ellis rejoined Harvey's band, and Flood was hired again as producer. The sessions, which continued into April the following year, resulted in
Is This Desire? (1998). Originally released in September 1998, the album received a
Grammy Award nomination for Best Alternative Music Performance. The album's lead single, "
A Perfect Day Elise", was moderately successful in the United Kingdom, peaking at number 25 on the
UK Singles Chart, her most successful single to date. In July 2020, a vinyl reissue of
To Bring You My Love was announced, including unreleased demos.
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea and Uh Huh Her: 2000–2006 In early 2000, Harvey began work on her fifth studio album
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea with Rob Ellis and Mick Harvey. Written in her native Dorset, Paris and New York, the album showcased a more mainstream
indie rock and
pop rock sound to her previous albums and the lyrics followed themes of love that tied into Harvey's affection for New York City. The album featured
Radiohead frontman
Thom Yorke on three tracks, including his lead vocals on "This Mess We're In". Upon its release in October 2000 the album was a critical and commercial success, selling over one million copies worldwide and charting in both the United Kingdom and the United States. The album's three singles—"Good Fortune", "A Place Called Home" and "This Is Love"—were moderately successful. The album won a
BRIT Award nomination for Best Female Artist and two Grammy Award nominations for Best Rock Album and Best Female Rock Performance for the album's third single, "
This Is Love". Harvey was nominated for, and won, the 2001
Mercury Prize. The awards ceremony was held on the same day as the
September 11 attacks on the United States and Harvey was on tour in Washington, D.C., one of the affected cities, when she won the prize. Reflecting on the win in 2001, she said: "quite naturally I look back at that and only remember the events that were taking place across the world and to win the prize on that day—it didn't have much importance in the grand scheme of things", noting "it was a very surreal day". The same year, Harvey also topped a readers' poll conducted by
Q magazine of the 100 Greatest Women in Rock Music. During three years of various collaborations with other artists, Harvey was also working on her sixth studio album,
Uh Huh Her, which was released in May 2004. For the first time since
4-Track Demos (1993), Harvey played every instrument—with the exception of drums provided by Rob Ellis—and was the sole producer. The album received "generally favourable reviews" by critics, but its production was criticised. It debuted and peaked at number 12 in the UK Albums Chart and was certified Silver by the
BPI within a month of its release. Harvey also did an extensive world tour in promotion of the album, lasting seven months. Selected recordings from the tour were included on Harvey's first live DVD,
On Tour: Please Leave Quietly, directed by Maria Mochnacz and released in 2006.
White Chalk and Let England Shake: 2007–2014 During her first performance since the
Uh Huh Her tour at the Hay Festival of Literature & Arts on 26 May 2006, Harvey revealed that her next studio album would be almost entirely piano-based. Following the October release of
The Peel Sessions 1991–2004, a compilation of songs recorded from 1991 to 2000 during her radio sessions with John Peel, she began recording her seventh studio album
White Chalk in November, together with
Flood,
John Parish and
Eric Drew Feldman and drummer
Jim White in a studio in West London.
White Chalk was released in September 2007 and marked a radical departure from her usual alternative rock style, consisting mainly of piano ballads. The album received favourable reviews, its style being described by one critic as containing "pseudo-Victorian elements—drama, restraint, and antiquated instruments and sounds." Harvey herself said of the album: "when I listen to the record I feel in a different universe, really, and I'm not sure whether it's in the past or in the future. The record confuses me, that's what I like—it doesn't feel of this time right now, but I'm not sure whether it's 100 years ago or 100 years in the future", summing up the album's sound as "really weird." During the tour for the album Harvey performed without a backing band, and also began performing on an
autoharp, which continues to be her primary instrument after guitar and has influenced her material since
White Chalk. March 2009 saw the release of her second collaboration studio album with John Parish
A Woman a Man Walked By. Written in the vein of punk blues, folk and experimental rock, it was preceded by the lead single
Black Hearted Love. As with their first effort, Parish wrote all of the music and played most of the instruments, leaving Harvey to the lyrics and singing. In April 2010, Harvey appeared on
The Andrew Marr Show to perform a new song titled "Let England Shake". In a pre-performance interview with Marr, she stated that the new material she had written had been "formed out of the landscape that I've grown up in and the history of this nation" and as "a human being affected by politics." Her eighth studio album
Let England Shake was released in February 2011, and received universal critical acclaim.
NMEs 10/10 review summarised the album as "a record that ventures deep into the heart of darkness of war itself and its resonance throughout England's past, present and future" and other reviews also noted its themes and writing style as "bloody and forceful", mixing "ethereal form with brutal content", and "her most powerful." Dealing with the
then-conflict in Afghanistan and other episodes from English history, the album featured John Parish, Mick Harvey and Jean-Marc Butty as Harvey's backing band and the quartet toured extensively in its promotion. Following the release of the album's two well-received singles—"
The Words That Maketh Murder" and "
The Glorious Land"—and the collection of short films by Seamus Murphy to accompany the album, Harvey won her second Mercury Music Prize on 6 September. The award marked her as the first artist to receive the award twice, entering her into the
Guinness World Records as the only artist to have achieved this, and sales of
Let England Shake increased 1,190% overnight following her win. On 23 September,
Let England Shake was certified Gold in the United Kingdom and was listed as album of the year by
MOJO and
Uncut. On 3 August 2013, Harvey released a song "Shaker Aamer" in support of the
Guantanamo Bay detention camp detainee by the
same name who was the last British citizen to be held there. The song describes in detail what Aamer endured during his four-month
hunger strike.
The Hope Six Demolition Project, and I Inside the Old Year Dying: 2015–present On 16 January 2015, PJ Harvey began recording her ninth studio album,
The Hope Six Demolition Project, in front of a live audience. A custom built recording studio was made in
London's
Somerset House.
Uncut magazine noted that much like her previous album
Let England Shake, many of the lyrics were politically charged, but this time it was more globally focused. While recording she was shown to be using
saxophones, an
autoharp and a
bouzouki.
Flood was confirmed to be the producer of the album. On 18 December 2015, Harvey released a 20-second teaser for the album, which contained a release date of spring 2016. On 21 January 2016, the debut single, "
The Wheel", was played on
Steve Lamacq's show on
BBC Radio 6 Music. The album was released on 15 April. A new video, "The Orange Monkey", was shared on 2 June 2016. Directed by Irish filmmaker Seamus Murphy, it was made from footage of Murphy's and Harvey's trips to
Afghanistan. Together they have also traveled to Washington, D.C., and Kosovo and their collaboration yielded the 2015 book
The Hollow of the Hand, which collected her poems and his photographs. Their impressions from the journey and the creative process behind the recording of the new album were chronicled in the documentary called
A Dog Called Money, which was premiered at the
69th Berlin International Film Festival. The album reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and was nominated for a Grammy Award in the Best Alternative Music Album category. Harvey spent much of 2016 and 2017 touring the world with her nine-piece band, playing mainly on saxophone and taking her critically lauded live show around North America, South America, Europe and Australasia. Harvey remained active since then, frequently releasing folk songs for soundtracks to popular TV series and films. In 2019, she released the instrumental soundtrack album to the
Ivo van Hove stage adaptation of
All About Eve with the vocals of
Gillian Anderson and
Lily James. In October 2022, she released another full soundtrack album to the Irish black comedy
Apple TV+ TV Series
Bad Sisters together with
Tim Phillips. From 2020 up to 2022,
UMC/
Island Records and
Beggars Group launched the reissue campaign of her studio work, accompanied by separate
demo records to each album. In the culmination of the reissue project, the compilation of 59 songs, previously unavailable physically or digitally, titled
B-Sides, Demos and Rarities was released on 4 November 2022. In June 2022, Harvey stated that her next studio album is scheduled to be released in summer 2023. In January 2023,
Rolling Stone ranked Harvey at number 145 on its list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time. In April 2023, it was announced on Harvey's official website that her tenth studio album
I Inside the Old Year Dying would be released on 7 July 2023 on
Partisan Records. It also marked the first time (since the release of
Dry on
Too Pure in 1992), Harvey releasing her album on the independent label, after 30 years being signed on
Island Records, part of
Universal Music Group. The first single "A Child's Question, August" premiered on 26 April 2023. Harvey toured worldwide to support the new album from September 2023 to March 2025. The album has been met with widespread critical acclaim, debuted at number 5 at UK Albums Chart and has been nominated as the
Best Alternative Music Album at the
66th Annual Grammy Awards. In the end of December 2025, Harvey confirmed via social media, that she is writing songs for her 11th studio album and poems for her next book. She also shared a playlist of songs with deep roots in folk, jazz, post-punk, ambient and art music. == Collaborations and projects ==