PJ Harvey - "A Perfect Day Elise" (1998)

This single came out when a lot of critical attention was being focused on the roughness and dark mood of PJ Harvey’s output; which is basically what you get here. Lots of distortion and compressed vocals as Polly tells a rather grim tale. But what’s not to love about it?

Like the rest of Is this Desire?, the lyrics focus on a female character. It seems that after a young man “got lucky one time/Hitting with the girl in room 509”, our Elise wants nothing to do with him, causing him to react in manic-murderous-suicidal way.. Other reviews might deal with the literary origins of this story better than myself, but it matches the dark portrayal of human desire found on the rest of the album.

There’s still some pop- like rhythm behind the bleakness, much like “Down By The Water”; so that while the harshness of the sound and lyrics are striking, the result is one of PJ Harvey’s most memorable and listenable singles.

B-side “The Northwood” sounds about half-finished, or maybe like an intro; a joyous mess of strings while Polly and a male voice (John Parish?) sing of someone running from a loved one. Maybe Joe after he killed Elise? 

The third track on the CD is the unspeakably beautiful “Sweeter Than Anything”. It’s a slow number with low guitars and a really introverted, emotional feel to it. The tale of estranged lovers could easily have made it onto Is This Desire?, content-wise, but the musical representation of the feeling here is more delicate, more tender. Check this out for a closing stanza:

“We were
Never more than a dream
Brief as
Summer or spring
Sweeter than anything”

Few artists are able to express sadness in such a compelling way as PJ Harvey can.