Review

Today's review is of PJ Harvey'sperformance in the Olympia, Dublin

She stands there smiling, wearing a long white gown embroidered with graffiti, surrounded by instruments and amplifiers strewn with fairy lights, looking utterly and contentedly alone.

In her latest guise, that of a stern Victorian governess, the constantly regenerating force that is Polly Jean Harvey looks as incongruous as one might have hoped, as unexpected as expected. Strapping on a hulking electric guitar, amplified and stressed to the point of growling distortion, her opening salvo of To Bring You My Lovecauses the fixtures of the Olympia to rattle.

"It's like being in your front room," she says approvingly of the venue, referring, I think, to its intimacy, but if she brings this much raw power to being a house-guest, you'd want to bubble-wrap the good china first.

This rare solo performance, in support of Harvey's haunted and haunting eighth album, White Chalk,might have brought vague expectations of a more delicate, fragile side to the enigmatic musician. But while she honours the songs from the album with spectral grace and soft intensity, her performance is a careful balance between vulnerability and complete command. She never falters at the piano, an instrument with which she has only recently become familiar, and is spry enough to respond to every audience heckle.

The bare piano on When Under Ether, a sparse and affecting song that touches on abortion, allows the lyrics to float by as though through a fog of anaesthetisia. For The Devil, meanwhile, Harvey replaces the insistent percussion of her recording with the simple hard clack of a metronome, and somehow the song sounds more imposing.

To hear her go back to the guitar, the instrument with which she is most associated, is an odd sensation; a familiar pleasure mitigated by its swallowing din. Even the ferocious Man-Size, Snakeand Big Exithave trouble distinguishing themselves within it, while the brooding electronic drag of Electric Lightor the glassy shrillness of Nina in Ecstasyare more startling departures.

She excels when stretching herself - hearing Down By the Watertransferred to an autoharp makes it all the more seductive and unsettling - but it is The Desperate Kingdom of Love, delivered in a soft whisper on an acoustic guitar, that best encapsulates the guarded allure of PJ Harvey; exposed, compelling, but giving nothing away.