Swing it, sway, everything will be alright

I don’t do concert reviews. I’m saying this out the gate, because I feel the need to preface everything I make with a critique of myself. My mom does this when she cooks a meal, any meal at all. She’ll put it down, dishes and sides and salads and immediately she’ll start telling you all the things she wishes were better. Maybe, she says, the meat is too dry, the bread isn’t fresh enough, the water just isn't wet. It doesn’t really matter, it’s not real. None of this is real. It’s just that she worked really hard, and she is in fact very good at it, and it’s only in being perceived through the lens of her creation that she gets worried. I do this too, I’m a lot like my dad, but I’m also very much my mother and whenever I put food down for Lysh and myself I tell her about all my little failings. Sorry the sauce is bad, the noodles aren’t perfect. Sorry that I’ll never think that I’m doing this right, and that I make it everyone’s problem. I’m just a little self-obsessed, but I also have imposter syndrome. 

Lysh and I went to see PJ Harvey here in Toronto, on the east end of town, which if you live in Toronto and you live in the west end you’ll know can feel like driving to the moon. It has to be worth it, even though it’s not really that far, but far is relative, and distance means nothing. It’s funny how these things change. When I lived in the Yukon I would have killed for a perfect evening to only be a 30 minute drive. Now, here in the city, unless it’s happening right in my living room there’s a good chance it’s already at risk of being too far.

PJ is someone whose work I’ve loved for a long time, but she is Lysh’s absolute favorite artist and that changes things a little. This is one of life’s greatest promises, that sometimes you will get to see and hear the world and its creations through someone you love, experience what they feel and what they take away from it all and that can change you if you let it. It’s nice to be changed, because it’s nice to let go.

We listen to PJ at home, and whenever I make a playlist I know Lysh will hear I put her on there too, just so the tether remains strong. I love that Lysh loves her work so much, because it makes me find new things within it too, and we should all be so lucky to find new corners in the pathways we have always known. I’ve never seen PJ live, but I’ve heard rumors and rumblings of it being a life changing experience, and I’m always available to have my life changed forever. 

This was a birthday gift from my parents, our two tickets and the promise of a night on the other side of town, away from our apartment and away from our worries and in the heart of something we can lose ourselves to the promise of. I could feel what Lysh has felt and described. I could be changed. And isn’t it so nice to be changed forever?

I rented a car from a car-sharing app, rented it for just long enough to be as expensive as a taxi. But this way, our way, we could choose the music and the route and we could be alone. We could talk and we could be alone together away from all the other places we are alone together and I love a drive for this. I love to be alone and on the go somewhere new. We talked excitedly about seeing PJ Harvey, out there alone together on the go. Lysh recounted the times she has seen her in the past, and we talked only a little about the details in our life that have been holding us down lately. All the things that are private and hidden away from others. I share a lot in my work, but I don’t share anything sometimes too and this is a delicate dance. How to share so much without ever revealing everything. There are private and difficult things we are dealing with, and this was our night to let them go, to deny their power over our lives in favor of what was ahead, even just for a little while. 

I’m still sad that I let myself fall into bad habits. Parking was confusing, traffic went from slow to exasperating, and the car rental company doesn’t give you a key to lock the door anymore. You use the app, you must repeatedly force clunky communication through gritted Blueteeth that never hits when you need it. The car wouldn’t lock, and the show was starting and I got annoyed and I felt my face fall flush with frustrated anger that belongs to a life I tell myself I have left behind, only sometimes I haven’t. I got too easily annoyed in the parking lot before we went inside and I worried a little that I had ruined it. This one perfect night we had out together. 

The door eventually locked, Lysh walked off in search of someone to pay for parking, and I thought I had ruined the night before it ever began when we found each other again at the head of the parking lot. Lysh a little quieter now than she had been before, but maybe that was just the energy of the outer walls of all the promises of the evening. A collective breath held in, waiting. Then we were inside the venue, the crisp chill of an extremely air conditioned venue on the east end of Toronto hit before anything, before the music and before the awed silence of the crowd. 

I’ve never seen thousands of people so happy to stand in quiet and content pleasure. PJ was on stage by the time we walked in, and had already ensorceled the crowd with her every movement. We found a spot to stand and watch and it’s been so long since I’ve been able to just stand and watch and not have any responsibilities beyond this. My only task to just enjoy. My role here was to let go. 

PJ opened the night by moving through every track of her latest record, 2023’s I Inside the Old Year Dying. By the time we arrived, she had moved into the second track, “Autumn Term”, and instantly we were part of the masses holding onto every word. The world slowed around us and we existed here outside of time in the center of all things. I know this record, I thought, and I know this song but it felt new to me all the same. This is a beautiful thing when it happens. Writing about music and thinking about it and talking about it is my job. That’s weird to think about. It’s hard sometimes to just enjoy something outside of the critique of it, and here I was, remembering what I loved about so many things. 

I Inside the Old Year Dying is a mystery box of a record, one that I had not fully deciphered by the time we saw this show. Before recording this album, PJ released a kind of magical-realism novel told through poetry and verse, Orlam, and you can hear the influence of that in this, her tenth record. The mystery and obfuscation of it all, haunting and mysterious a little, but enticing too. Like the allure of a wolf in the forest, blood on the teeth, but something sweet in the air. You can’t help but fall deeper in. 

PJ moved on stage like a dancer, every movement a deliberate action, and time ceased to exist as she moved through songs, through secrets and dangerous promise on stage, surrounded by her longtime collaborators, furnished with twigs and sparse furniture and a backdrop that shifted in color that threw shadows on the texture of its face. 

I could feel what Lysh has described to me, something felt different here. Something felt new, changed. I had forgotten about the parking lot, the anxious worries at home, the hour. All things. Time melted, became immaterial. I struggle sometimes with being alert at shows, since I quit drinking it's harder than ever to be alert at shows because the pull to be something outside of alert and coherent is strong but here I only felt desire. I just wanted to be here, to bear witness. 

We saw some friends, gathered forces, found new spots to stand and watch, laughed and hugged and forgot all troubles and terrible things and this is the promise of a perfect night out maybe. That all the shadows of anxious things can melt away for an hour and then more. 

PJ and band moved through the entire record, then her band played “the Colour of the Earth” without her, before she emerged back onto the stage to move through a collection of beloved favourites: “The Glorious Land” with its fox hunting horn, then “The Words That Maketh Murder” from Let England Shake. I told Lysh with a whispered voice that I had always wondered if they would play the fox hunting horn live. They do not.

Songs moved in pairs from records past, I thought about the tracks I might want to hear, “Dry” or the title track from Rid of Me maybe, or “Sheela-Na-Gig”. None appeared, and it never mattered. When PJ grabbed a guitar and opened into “Man-Size”, and after that "Dress" voices erupted in delight and anticipation. All the songs we have loved come back to remind us of how it feels to be embraced by joy and pleasure for minutes that could last for hours. 

We started to walk to the exit on the second and final song of the encore, “Dollar, Dollar” from The Hope Six Project, and it wasn’t until much later that we realized it was nearing the two hour mark. We gathered ourselves, said farewells, walked out into the night and felt the lingering heat of the summer and the breeze on our face and said nothing until we said everything about how perfect it all was. 

I never looked at my clock even once, not until we were home and in bed, which is rare on even the best night out. I’m always aware of the time because I am always stressed and anxious about something, responsibilities and deadlines and the unknown future but on this one night in an overly air conditioned club on the other side of the moon none of it mattered. We could just be here, on this one perfect night together, and feel the things that create joy, change something in our hearts, and isn’t it so nice to be changed forever?