PJ Harvey: When Instruments Become Identity
Polly Jean Harvey has never settled. From the first chords of Dry to the poetic landscapes of I Inside the Old Year Dying, she has built a career around evolution. A multi-instrumentalist, she plays guitar, autoharp, piano, and drums: each offering a different lens into her artistic vision. But with each new album, she also asks: what voice will this one demand?
Harvey's musical roots reach deep. She grew up surrounded by her parents' vinyl collection: Howlin' Wolf, Captain Beefheart, Nina Simone, and the Rolling Stones. Those sounds shaped her taste. As a teenager, she played saxophone and studied music, but she wrestled with what it meant to create rather than perform. She wanted to build something original.
Image credit to: Juan Bendana/Flickr
Her albums reflect this tension between form and self-expression. In White Chalk, she leaned into fragile, acoustic textures, stripping away the raw power of her earlier work. In Let England Shake, she used the autoharp and walked through war-torn landscapes, literally and musically, for inspiration. Instruments were vessels for transformation, each one revealing a different facet of who she was becoming.
Reinvention as Practice
Harvey's approach to recording and performance reveals that artistic vision is always in flux. She's described wanting to avoid doing what people expect and resisting the "PJ Harvey voice," constantly developing her vocal style, shifting instruments, and reinventing her aesthetic. Even her demos are stripped-back and spontaneous, giving space for experimentation. The cracked piano, the worn harp, the echo in a small room, they're imperfect, but honest.
Visually as much as sonically, Harvey has shaped her persona with intention. Her album art, stage presence, and music videos are contrasting by design: beauty and brutality, austerity and theatricality. She uses costumes, makeup, and setting to express something about where she is in life. For Harvey, self-expression is never passive. It's active, mutable, and tied intimately to the music she makes.
That link between instruments and personal expression is what makes Harvey's influence so powerful. She asks us to feel the weight of what went into each note. The listener senses something about the place, the instrument, the person behind it all.
Image credit to: Phil King/Flickr
Crafted from Intention
At Vinylize, we honour this same philosophy of deliberate transformation. The Harvey frame embodies the spirit of reinvention through bold, uncompromising lines crafted from recycled vinyl records. Like PJ Harvey's music, the design carries texture, history, and character.
The Harvey frame is designed for those who understand that what you wear is part of how you speak to the world. Wearing the Harvey isn't about concealment; It's identity worn with intention, just as Harvey has always played with purpose.
Research Sources
NPR: PJ Harvey: The Fresh Air Interview
The Guardian: PJ Harvey: a singular talent, she dances to her own tune
Pitchfork: PJ Harvey interview on instruments & sound
BBC: 6 of PJ Harvey’s biggest influences…according to PJ Harvey
