The walk into The Great Hall at Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre (16 March) felt a bit like stepping through a hidden doorway – like I left the week of cyclone fatigue behind and wandered into something richer, heavier, crackling with energy.
However, before the night truly unfurls, there's Mick Turner. No warning, no dramatic lighting shift, just him, already at it, guitar humming through the speakers. For a second, I think he's still sound-checking, just idly noodling away, but no, this is his set.The crowd's still piling in, drinks sloshing, voices rolling over one another, and the house lights are still on. This may be why some people aren't exactly tuning in, but Turner doesn't seem fussed He's playing like a man who's been doing this forever, not to impress or demand attention – just because he loves it.
If you take the time to study his repertoire and the many talents he has worked with, you'll understand why he's got nothing to prove. His guitar work is all ebb and flow, shimmering and salt-worn, like something carried to you on a rolling tide. It's the kind of sound that seeps in rather than shouts, rewarding those of us who stop to listen. For those that don't, that's fine.
He's in his own current, weaving something loose and hypnotic with his ebbs and flows, cracking open the night in his own, quiet way. Turner ends his set with a few short words, that I couldn't quite catch.
PJ Harvey - image © Naureen Mazari
Two blue light-spots on either side of the ceiling truss are pointed to converge at the centre‑point of the stage. There is rolling fog from smoke machines, creating opaque blue triangles in the air within the path of their spreading beams.
The house lights finally dim. A hush settles over the Convention Centre as we hold our collective breath in preparation of our slow descent into something ancient and unknowable. You see, PJ Harvey's shows are a whole immersive experience. She weaves theatrical storytelling with haunting vocals and expressive movements, pulling you into her world.
Forget over-the-top stage effects; she's all about moody lighting, minimalist sets, and costumes that set the perfect tone; and she's not just singing – I trust she'll be playing multiple instruments, from guitar to autoharp, keeping things fresh and unpredictable.
She's a creative that steps into all kinds of personas, from a gothic siren to an androgynous rock icon, and even a folklore-driven storyteller (wink, wink). Each tour brings a new chapter of PJ to discover, and right now the air is thick with this sense of anticipation among a solid repping of Gen X fans and the fewer millennials and boomers.
The excitement is like a forest mist rolling in, unseen but felt and befitting of the stage design before us. PJ Harvey emerges – a mystical figure, clad in a dress overlaid with a flowing cloak, something otherworldly almost, her presence a moving invocation.
Around her, the faithful: John Parish (guitar, keyboards), Jean-Marc Butty (drums, percussion), Giovanni Ferrano (bass), and James Johnston (guitar, violin, organ). The circle is cast, and the ritual begins.
Opening with 'Prayer At The Gate', Harvey's voice stretching long and mournful but clear, a lament carried on the winds of Parish's delicate touch, it is the whisper of dead leaves underfoot, Butty's percussion the slight sounding heartbeat of something slumbering beneath the earth.
PJ Harvey - image © Naureen Mazari
There is no distance between Harvey and her fans; we are drawn into the woodland, the moor, the liminal space between seasons moving toward January. I feel like I might slip between the grey alder trees on Harvey's cloak (designed by costumier Todd Lynn). I'm totally immersed in her northern hemisphere realm and taken in by its spell.
Flowing into 'Autumn Term' and 'Lwonesome Tonight', the sound is swelling, enveloping, hypnotic. We sing "are you Elvis? Are you God? Jesus sent to win my trust? 'Love me tender' are his words. As I've loved you, so you must."
Yes. The song is a dedication to the King's 'Lonesome Tonight', yet an exploration into a woman's unreciprocated devotion. It's so layered, with double entendre references and influences and experiences of Dorset, its dialect and nature as captured within her epic poem 'Orlam'.
In Harvey's work, there are spectral echoes of Nick Cave lingering in the air or the ghost of Kate Bush flickering between the chords of this album, but in this moment, I hear Joni Mitchell woven into the song's aching devotion.
The band is moving as one, a living entity breathing through Harvey's voice. A sharp intake of breath – Harvey launches into the high, lilting intro notes of 'Seem An I'. The moment holds, delicate yet charged. Then, 'The Nether-Edge' – its rhythm urgent, pulsing beneath something ghostly. Harvey's measured, quivering notes slice through the air like the birdsong that haunts the set.
'I Inside The Old Year Dying' is no mere song; it is a crossing, a passage between realms, its cyclical pulse like the turning of wheel of the year through its eight sabbats, and the cycle of life and death as they invoke the ghosts with their chant of "the chalky children of evermore". Harvey's voice is a vessel, shifting between the celestial and the guttural.
'All Souls''s electronic tease kicks off the eerie tapestry of sound, a lullaby for the lost. By the time we reach 'A Child's Question, August', the room feels heavier, thick with unspoken thoughts. The melancholy hums beneath the surface, an aching tension that does not resolve, only lingers, like a ghost at the threshold.
PJ Harvey - image © Naureen Mazari
'I Inside The Old I Dying' and 'August' deepen the spell, intertwining voices and instrumentation in an almost trance-like state. The violin has sung brilliantly to us tonight. 'A Child's Question, July' is whispering of longing and recollection before 'A Noiseless Noise' ends the first part of the set in a shattering crescendo, the sound reverberating through bone and breath alike.
Then, in an unexpected turn, Harvey steps back, and the band alone delivers 'The Colour Of The Earth'. Stripped back and raw, its Celtic lilt breaks the spell just enough to let us breathe again.
The second part of the set continues to rise from the embers of the first, a resurgence of something wilder and the fractured backdrop often looking like cracked crust above molten lava or blue on black ice, or an unravelling world between worlds.
'The Glorious Land' crackles like distant thunder, 'The Words That Maketh Murder' another striking in its urgency and Harvey picks up the autoharp for this one. Then, a turn – a bolt of lightning splitting the sky – '50ft Queenie' detonates with a snarl, and Harvey kicks out before rushing mid-stage towards her fans.
Harvey's voice is a feral thing, clawing its way from her throat. The rowdiest of applauses shower Harvey and the band after this! The contrast is intoxicating, the sacred and profane colliding as she and the band hurl themselves into 'Black Hearted Love'.
A raw cheer pierces the air: "F... yeah, PJ!" A voice from the crowd unable to contain itself. Another punter, enraptured, claps wildly to 'The Garden', their enthusiasm almost animalistic, breaking the trance for a moment before we are swept back under.
The darkness is shifting again with 'The Desperate Kingdom Of Love', the crowd hanging onto every note, every serene quiver of Harvey's voice; her Cave influences are strong in this one. 'Man-Size' rolls in with rocky swaggering intensity, the rhythm hitting like a spell cast with conviction.
PJ Harvey - image © Naureen Mazari
Now we get 'Dress' – the song that started it all, still brimming with that frenzied energy, still laced with longing and frustration. The audience is rapturous, swept into its feverish grasp and we fall in love with Harvey all over again.
'Down By The Water' slithers in, venomous, intoxicating, its whispered refrain curling like the stage smoke earlier. I'm stoked it makes the set list. Then, the title track from 'To Bring You My Love' – slow-burning, ritualistic, steeped in shadow. This is the final summoning, the last invocation before our night with Harvey folds in on itself.
Harvey disappears into the dark, but not for long. The encore is a coda, a reckoning. 'C'mon Billy' is tender yet sharp, its edges softened but not dulled. I confess, up to this point I'd managed to refrain from recording any songs on my phone and instead absorbing it all through my own eyes – but right now I'm claiming possession by Harvey's rapture as I capture this one for my old lady archives.
Then, as if to remind us of the weight of all we have witnessed, 'White Chalk'. Stripped bare, delicate yet devastating, Harvey's voice reaches us through time, through our flesh, through the very fabric of our being. The final note hovers, suspended, before dissolving into silence.
The spell is broken, but something lingers in the air. The audience exhales, eyes still lost in the mist. We leave changed, as though stepping from one world into the next, still carrying the echoes of something deep, something ancient, something beyond words.
More photos from the concert.
